Exposed The task profile has little on the defensive side of the ledger.

Administrative assistants and executive assistants

Scheduling, drafting and coordinating — the exact activities appearing most in real AI usage.

Horizon: to 2030
Protection from automation: Partly protected · our reading

This one is genuinely two jobs wearing one title. The part that is calendar Tetris, document formatting and travel booking is directly exposed. The part that is knowing what the boss does not want to hear in front of the board is not.

That is the split PwC formalises across the whole labour market, and it is why the useful question is never “is this job safe” but “which half of it survives”.

What holds it up

Trust and discretion still matter: the assistant knows things the org chart does not
Someone must coordinate people who will not coordinate themselves

The four tests

What protects this job

Four things that keep a job out of a machine's reach. Score them 0–3 and add them up: the higher the total, the harder the job is to automate.

Needs hands and a body — not at all (not at all)
A person is answerable — yes (yes)
It needs a relationship — yes (yes)
The role can't be split — yes (yes)

One of them holds, which is usually what survives of a job after its routine half is automated.

Our reading of the job, not a measurement — the evidence is below.

Verified claims

Administrative assistants appear among the roles employers expect to decline sharply to 2030. WEF 2025
The most common and most successful AI-assisted activities are information work — creating, processing and communicating information. Microsoft Research 2025
The ILO's refined index places clerical support work in the highest exposure gradients. ILO 2025