Accountant vs Truck Driver: which is more exposed to AI?
31 points apart. These are not comparable risk profiles.
Accountant sits at 71% time-weighted AI exposure against 40% for Truck Driver, a 31-point gap driven by the 51% of accountant work time that current models can already substitute outright. Truck Driver holds a larger human-critical core — 46% of the role's time sits in work like "handling weather and road hazards" that models score poorly on. The two sit in different families — Business & Finance and Transportation — so any move between them is a career change, not a lateral step.
Seven dimensions, side by side.
What actually creates the gap.
Accountants spend 51% of their time-weighted week on tasks a current model can produce end-to-end, against 10% for Truck Drivers. The single largest contributor is "data entry and transaction recording", graded at 97% and worth 15% of the role's time. That one task accounts for more of the gap than any difference in seniority, tooling, or industry.
- Data entry and transaction recording97% · 15% time
- Reconcile accounts92% · 12% time
- Generate financial statements88% · 10% time
- Tax return preparation81% · 14% time
- Stakeholder communications14% · 7% time
- Fraud investigation18% · 5% time
- Strategic financial advisory21% · 14% time
- Route planning and optimisation82% · 10% time
- Handling weather and road hazards8% · 6% time
- Urban and last-mile delivery14% · 18% time
- Loading, securing, and documenting cargo18% · 8% time
Both roles lean on procedural, judgement — that is the part of your experience that travels intact. The real divide is manual: Truck Drivers score 88 there against 8 for Accountants, an 80-point spread. That is the gap you would actually have to close.
| DIMENSION | ACCOUNTANT | TRUCK DRIVER |
|---|---|---|
| Manual | 8 | 88 |
| Cognitive | 74 | 44 |
Neither role lists the other as a mapped adjacent career, and the capability profiles sit 36 points apart on average. Treat a move between them as a genuine career change with a retraining cost, not as a hedge against AI exposure.
Score your own exposure in 8 questions →Common questions.
Is Accountant or Truck Driver more at risk from AI?
Accountant. It scores 71% time-weighted AI exposure against 40% for Truck Driver — a 31-point gap. 51% of accountant work time is already fully substitutable by current models, versus 10% for Truck Drivers.
Which pays more, Accountant or Truck Driver?
Accountant, by roughly $26k at the median ($78k versus $52k). Note that the higher-paying role here is also the more AI-exposed one, which matters if you are weighing pay against durability.
Can a accountant switch to being a truck driver?
Neither role lists the other as a mapped adjacent career, and the capability profiles sit 36 points apart on average. Treat a move between them as a genuine career change with a retraining cost, not as a hedge against AI exposure.
Which role is growing faster, Accountant or Truck Driver?
Both are projected at 4% over ten years (as fast as avg).