Every indicator, every scoring anchor, and every known weakness. Published free and unpaywalled, permanently — because a number you can't interrogate isn't worth paying for.

What the index does

Eighteen signals, scored 0 to 4 each week against fixed written anchors, rolled into two numbers.

The ADI measures escalation, 0–100. The Response Index measures policy response on the same scale. Their difference is the Policy Lag Gap — positive and widening means displacement is outrunning the response.

Keeping response out of the composite is deliberate. Response is not escalation, and folding them together would hide the one number that matters most.

Architecture

Pillar

Weight

What it tests

A — Labor market signal

35

Whether displacement shows up in hiring, participation, claims and trade wages before it shows up as unemployment

B — Offshore & contract

20

The channel cut first, because it carries no US political friction

C — Deployment & capability

20

Whether capability is reaching production, and whether regulatory friction is slowing it

E — Fiscal & structural

25

Whether gains reach wages or accrue to capital, and whether the payroll tax base is eroding

D — Policy response

Scored separately as the Response Index. Displacement-relevant measures only.

Pillar points = (sum of scores ÷ (4 × indicator count)) × weight. Equal weighting within a pillar is deliberate — unequal weights would imply a precision the signals don't support.

Bands

ADI

Band

Scenario

0–20

Dormant

Benign absorption

21–40

Background drift

Grinding drift — the modal case

41–60

Active escalation

At least one channel outrunning absorption

61–80

Sectoral shock

A named sector tipping

81–100

Compound conditions

The tail case — verify inputs before publishing

Policy Lag Gap bands: 0–5 response tracking · 6–15 mild lag · 16–30 clear lag · 31+ severe lag. A negative gap means policy is running ahead of displacement, which historically almost never happens — investigate it as a scoring error before treating it as real.

Pillar A — Labor market signal (35 points)

A1 · Entry-level vs senior posting ratio — weekly. Source: Indeed Hiring Lab, LinkUp, or a manual count across a fixed occupation basket.

0 ratio rising, junior hiring recovering · 1 flat within normal variance · 2 falling steadily 3+ weeks · 3 down sharply, junior reqs pulled · 4 junior hiring near-frozen in 2+ exposed occupations

A2 · Prime-age (25–54) participation rate — monthly. Source: BLS Employment Situation, table A-1.

0 rising · 1 flat within 0.1pt · 2 down 0.1–0.2pt over three months · 3 down 0.3–0.5pt over three months · 4 down 0.5pt+ with no cyclical explanation

A3 · Continued claims, four-week average — weekly. Source: DOL ETA 539, Thursdays.

0 falling · 1 flat · 2 rising modestly, no concentration · 3 rising with information and professional-services concentration · 4 sharp rise concentrated in exposed sectors

A4 · Skilled trades wage growth vs trend — monthly. Source: BLS CES, construction and installation/maintenance/repair. This is the shelter-flooding test.

0 accelerating, trades still scarce · 1 on trend · 2 decelerating slightly · 3 clearly below trend, applicant volume up · 4 flat or negative real growth in the trades

Pillar B — Offshore & contract channel (20 points)

B1 · Indian IT/BPM headcount — quarterly. Source: TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL results.

0 net adds accelerating · 1 positive but slowing · 2 roughly flat · 3 net reductions at two or more · 4 reductions across all four, or guidance cut citing automation

B2 · US staffing industry volume — weekly. Source: ASA Staffing Index.

0 rising · 1 flat · 2 declining modestly · 3 declining with IT and clerical concentration · 4 sharp decline plus guidance cuts citing automation

B3 · Named BPO/CSR/MSP losses attributed to automation — continuous. Source: trade press, earnings calls, client announcements.

0 none · 1 isolated mention · 2 two or three named accounts in a month · 3 multiple large accounts, a provider warns · 4 a major provider restructures or exits a service line

Pillar C — Deployment & capability (20 points)

C1 · Enterprise agent deployments at large employers — continuous. Source: earnings calls, press releases, vendor case studies.

0 pilots only · 1 production in narrow low-stakes functions · 2 production in a core function at one large employer · 3 multiple large employers, core functions, headcount tied · 4 explicitly framed as headcount replacement at scale

C2 · Layoffs explicitly attributed to AI — monthly. Source: Challenger Gray, WARN filings, layoffs.fyi.

0 none attributed · 1 scattered, likely cover for other causes · 2 consistent monthly attribution at small counts · 3 large single-employer action explicitly attributed · 4 multiple 1,000+ actions attributed within one quarter

C3 · Frontier agentic capability releases — continuous. Source: lab release notes, long-horizon agentic benchmarks.

0 no meaningful movement · 1 incremental gains · 2 notable jump on long-horizon tasks · 3 credibly performs multi-day autonomous work · 4 capability jump plus immediate enterprise availability

C4 · Regulatory friction on deployment — continuous. Source: bias-audit and disclosure duties, human-review mandates, preemption litigation. Scored in the escalation direction: high means little friction.

0 binding audit or human-review duties in force across multiple states, broadly scoped · 1 binding duties in force but narrowly scoped (hiring, health care) · 2 duties adopted somewhere but weakly enforced · 3 little effective friction, preemption gaining · 4 no effective friction, deployment legally unimpeded

Pillar E — Fiscal & structural (25 points)

E1 · Payroll tax receipts vs prior-year trend — monthly. Source: Monthly Treasury Statement, table 3.

0 above trend · 1 on trend · 2 slightly below · 3 below trend three months running · 4 below trend with employment flat — wage-base erosion

E2 · Labor share of national income — quarterly. Source: BEA NIPA, compensation share of gross domestic income.

0 rising · 1 flat · 2 declining slightly · 3 declining while productivity rises sharply · 4 sharp decline, gains landing on capital

E3 · Real wage growth, production & nonsupervisory — monthly. Source: BLS CES real earnings.

0 positive and accelerating · 1 positive, on trend · 2 slowing but positive · 3 flat in real terms · 4 negative in real terms while output rises

Pillar D — Policy response to displacement (Response Index)

Displacement-relevant measures only. Bias-audit, disclosure and discrimination law is not response — it scores under C4 as deployment friction.

D1 · Federal displacement-response legislation — income support, UI, worker transition only.

0 nothing, or the federal posture is actively deregulatory · 1 rhetoric only · 2 a displacement-focused bill introduced · 3 hearings held, a bill advances · 4 enacted

D2 · State displacement-response legislation — excludes bias-audit and disclosure bills.

0 nothing addressing displacement · 1 scattered introductions · 2 multiple states with active bills · 3 a state enacts · 4 several states enact, pattern forming

D3 · Restrictions on substitution — licensing, scope of practice, operator mandates.

0 none · 1 discussion only · 2 a board or agency opens a proceeding · 3 a binding restriction adopted in one state · 4 restrictions across multiple states or federally

D4 · Organized labor action on automation

0 none · 1 statements only · 2 automation language raised in negotiations · 3 protections won in a major contract · 4 strike or major action centered on automation

The weekly run

Twenty to forty minutes. Carry forward last week, then update only what has fresh data: A1, A3 and B2 weekly; the continuous signals as news warrants; monthly and quarterly indicators only in their release weeks.

Check the staleness figure. Above 40% carried-forward weight, the reading is low-confidence and should be published with that flag attached.

Reading discipline

A single week is noise. Only a four-week move of six points or more is worth writing about. Only a twelve-week trend justifies changing a conclusion.

Watch the gap, not just the number. The ADI can sit flat at 45 for a year while the Response Index falls — a meaningfully worsening situation the composite alone would hide.

Score conservatively. Between two levels, take the lower one. Upward drift is the standard failure mode of hand-scored indices, because escalation makes better copy than stability.

Changed in v1.1

The v1.0 model produced a Policy Lag Gap of −6 on its first scored week, implying policy was running ahead of displacement. Its own instructions said to investigate that as a scoring error. It was one.

Pillar D was measuring legislative volume rather than relevance. The 1,561 state AI bills that produced a high D2 score govern algorithmic discrimination, hiring-tool bias audits, disclosure and health care decision-making — none of which respond to displacement.

The fix has two parts. Pillar D is rescoped to displacement-relevant measures. The displaced content moves to C4 rather than being discarded, because bias audits and human-review mandates don't respond to displacement but they do slow deployment — which is exactly what pillar C measures. The laws were never irrelevant; they were filed under the wrong heading.

Re-scored under v1.1, the July 26 2026 baseline reads ADI 41 (was 44), Response Index 25 (was 50), gap +16 (was −6). Note that C4 pulled the composite down: regulatory friction is genuinely slowing deployment and v1.0 couldn't register it. Scores are not comparable across versions.

Known limitations

This is an index, not a probability or a forecast of any date. Scoring is subjective and two analysts will not produce identical readings. Several indicators have no clean public weekly series and depend on a hand-built basket, which introduces construction bias. The pillar weights encode a specific thesis about how displacement propagates; if that thesis is wrong, the weights are wrong with it.

And the model cannot see the thing it most wants to measure — work that is never posted, never offshored and never announced, because the role simply stops being backfilled.