United States stands at 26.6 of 100 on the Optional Work Index, a two-sided measure of how close paid work is to becoming economically optional1.
The index combines a supply side, whether machines can do the work, with a demand side, whether people can afford to stop, and reports their geometric mean2. One fixed method is applied to every country; only the underlying data differs.
Data coverage for USA is high: 5 of 5 component inputs drawn from primary data3 (supply 3/3, demand 2/2).
| Tier | Category | Index | Supply | Demand | Range | n |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Major AI & Automation Powers | 23.5 | 26.7 | 21.2 | 17.6–28.3 | 4 |
| 2 | Advanced Tech Economies | 27.9 | 26.2 | 30.6 | 20.9–39.3 | 9 |
| 3 | Large Diversified Emerging | 21.4 | 22.7 | 20.5 | 16.2–26.4 | 17 |
| 4 | Manufacturing-Driven Emerging | 21.1 | 22.8 | 19.7 | 15.6–25.2 | 19 |
| 5a | Resource/Primary-Sector, High-Income | 24.4 | 21.2 | 28.7 | 17.6–34.0 | 12 |
| 5b | Resource-Driven, Low/Mid-Income | 20.7 | 22.7 | 19.2 | 15.7–29.7 | 25 |
| 6 | Low-Income / High-Informality | 19.0 | 22.5 | 16.7 | 13.9–30.6 | 64 |
Construction
Supply = 0.40 AI capability + 0.31 robotics + 0.29 labour shift
Demand = 0.60 economic abundance + 0.40 wealth distribution
OWI = √(supply × demand)
The geometric mean is deliberate: work is optional only where machines can do it and people can afford to stop, so a high reading on one side cannot offset a low reading on the other. The method is identical for every country; comparability comes from the fixed construction, and only the input data varies.
The index quantifies the degree to which paid work has become economically optional within an economy, expressed as the conjunction of two conditions: that productive capacity can be met with less dependence on human labor, and that households can sustain material provision without relying on wages. It is a measurement instrument rather than a forecast, characterizing the present state of these conditions and their evolution over time.
Data sources
- 1World Bank — per-country indicators by ISO3; primary backbone for labour, abundance and distribution.
- 2ILOSTAT — labour, informality and social-protection coverage.
- 3IFR World Robotics — robot density per 10,000 manufacturing workers.
- 4AI capability frontier — a global capability benchmark, applied equally to all countries.
- 5FRED / BLS — higher-resolution United States series, where available.
Where a country lacks a primary series, the input is filled by a modelled estimate and flagged accordingly; component-level coverage is reported on each country page. Released 17 July 2026, version 3.1.0.