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STRATUSWORKFORCE SCAN
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Subsector, 561

Administrative and Support Services

8,599,170 people work in this industry in the US, at mean pay of $55,920 a year (BLS, May 2025). What follows is how much of their working time the best AI models could finish, when, and in which jobs and tasks. Estimates.

now
21%

of the paid hours. Estimate.

$133B

a year: 3.6 billion hours at what they cost. Not a forecast of savings.

Kinds of work
  • 32%
  • 14%
  • 54%
5%

of the paid hours are within reach now in tasks people already bring to Claude. Another 16% is within reach in tasks not yet seen there.

Across the US: 22% within reach now and 37% by the end of 2028, on the long-run pace at four in five.

Share of the paid hours within reach, now to 2030

0%25%50%75%100%2027202820292030NowDesk work: 32% of the time
Chosen to Ceiling: the share
DateNow
NowEnd of 2030

What each choice means: , , , , . Every pace starts from .

How far this has come

With GPT-4, measured in March 2023, 0% of this industry's paid hours were within reach at . With Claude 3.7 Sonnet, measured in February 2025, 2%. With Claude Mythos Preview (early), measured in April 2026, 19%. Today's estimate: 21%.

0%10%20%30%2023202420252026GPT-4, March 2023: 0% within reachGPT-4 Turbo (Nov 2023), November 2023: 0% within reachGPT-4o, May 2024: 0% within reachClaude 3.5 Sonnet (June 2024), June 2024: 0% within reacho1-preview, September 2024: 0% within reachClaude 3.5 Sonnet (Oct 2024), October 2024: 0% within reacho1, December 2024: 1% within reachClaude 3.7 Sonnet, February 2025: 2% within reacho3, April 2025: 7% within reachGPT-5, August 2025: 9% within reachGemini 3 Pro, November 2025: 11% within reachClaude Opus 4.5, November 2025: 11% within reachGPT-5.2, December 2025: 13% within reachClaude Opus 4.6, February 2026: 13% within reachClaude Mythos Preview (early), April 2026: 19% within reachToday (estimate), September 2026: 21% within reach
Each step is a new best model measured by METR, four in five; the dashed end is today's estimate. Point at a dot for the model.

A backcast: today's task data with the best model METR had measured by each date. It shows how fast the models have moved, not what anyone forecast at the time.

Where the hours are

Jobs by hours within reach now. The 40 largest jobs hold 74% of the people.

PeoplePay here
Customer Service Representatives366,29064%491 million$38K
Security Guards797,14014%235 million$37K
Office Clerks, General185,35054%209 million$43K
Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel151,97043%136 million$63K
Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks83,29078%134 million$50K
Human Resources Specialists158,74039%128 million$61K
General and Operations Managers229,96023%109 million$100K
Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive102,83043%91 million$46K
Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand474,4409%89 million$36K
Telemarketers39,85099%82 million$33K
First-Line Supervisors of Office and Administrative Support Workers95,25035%69 million$62K
Registered Nurses112,15028%65 million$91K

People: BLS counts for this industry, May 2025. Pay here: the median paid for the job in this industry, else its mean, else the national median. 541 smaller jobs (2,167,490 people) count in every total but are not listed. Task data covers 97% of the industry's people; the rest are in BLS "all other" groups with no task list, or in counts BLS does not publish.

The tasks with the most hours within reach by the end of 2028

Across the whole industry, on the chosen pace and reliability.

  1. Write reports of daily activities and irregularities, such as equipment or property damage, theft, presence of unauthorized persons, or unusual occurrences.Security Guards
    151 million hours100% of the task within reach
  2. Obtain and examine all relevant information to assess validity of complaints and to determine possible causes, such as extreme weather conditions that could increase utility bills.Customer Service Representatives
    83 million hours100% of the task within reach
  3. Complete contract forms, prepare change of address records, or issue service discontinuance orders, using computers.Customer Service Representatives
    76 million hours100% of the task within reach
  4. Record numbers of units handled or moved, using daily production sheets or work tickets.Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand
    66 million hours100% of the task within reach
  5. Develop sales presentations or proposals to explain service specifications.Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel
    65 million hours100% of the task within reach
  6. Check to ensure that appropriate changes were made to resolve customers' problems.Customer Service Representatives
    59 million hours80% of the task within reach
  7. Keep records of customer interactions or transactions, recording details of inquiries, complaints, or comments, as well as actions taken.Customer Service Representatives
    55 million hours100% of the task within reach
  8. Compute, record, and proofread data and other information, such as records or reports.Office Clerks, General
    46 million hours100% of the task within reach
  9. Review insurance policy terms to determine whether a particular loss is covered by insurance.Customer Service Representatives
    45 million hours100% of the task within reach
  10. Resolve customers' service or billing complaints by performing activities such as exchanging merchandise, refunding money, or adjusting bills.Customer Service Representatives
    39 million hours50% of the task within reach

Scan a typical company in this industry

The industry's largest jobs, in the proportions BLS counts across the whole industry, at the pay it pays, run through the company scan. A starting point before you have a roster, or a benchmark for the one you have.

Inside this industry

Within reach now and by the end of 2028, long-run pace, four in five.

How it is built: BLS counts the people in each job in this industry; each job's tasks and their lengths give its share within reach at a date; the industry's share is those shares weighted by people. Value is pay times 1.43 for benefits and payroll costs. Seen in Claude use splits today's share by whether Anthropic saw people bring each task to Claude in 2025; other AI tools are not counted. How it works