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MANIFOLD
Will humanoid robots reach 5% of "workers" in any of these five US occupations by 2031?
2
Ṁ100Ṁ74
resolved Sep 9
Resolved
N/A

DETAILS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION (generated mostly by Claude Opus 5)

Based on a prediction by Timothy B. Lee (@binarybits), that in five years humanoid robots will be under 10% of workers in all of: short-order cooks, retail shelf stockers, hotel housekeepers, bricklayers, trash collectors. (In a reply, he strengthened the claim, stating that his guess was "much less than 10%.") This market is the negation of his prediction, strengthened to a 5% threshold: YES if any single one of the five crosses 5%.

Share for each occupation = R / (H + R), where H is BLS OEWS employment (defined below) and R is the number of humanoid robot units deployed in US commercial or institutional settings performing that occupation's core tasks. (That is, non-humanoid robots do not count in either the numerator or the denominator.)

Occupations (SOC codes, latest OEWS release at resolution):

  • Short-order cooks — 35-2015, plus 35-2011 (Fast Food and Counter Workers cooks) if a robot's role fits either

  • Retail shelf stockers — 53-7065, restricted to NAICS 44-45 (retail trade); warehouse order-filling excluded

  • Hotel housekeepers — 37-2012, restricted to NAICS 7211 (traveler accommodation)

  • Bricklayers — 47-2021

  • Trash collectors — 53-7081

A "humanoid robot" is a mobile, general-purpose robot with a roughly human body plan — torso, two arms with manipulators, and legs or a mobile base — designed to work in environments built for humans without task-specific retrofitting of the workplace. Wheeled-base humanoids count. Explicitly excluded: fixed-base robotic arms, purpose-built single-task machines (bricklaying trucks, automated side-loader refuse trucks, floor scrubbers, shelf-scanning AMRs), and units requiring continuous 1:1 human teleoperation.

Evidence: company shipment disclosures, IFR World Robotics, analyst deployment trackers, and credible trade press. The burden is on YES. If no credible public evidence shows any occupation at or above 5%, this resolves NO. I will not resolve N/A for mere counting difficulty.

Resolves YES when the evidence indicates it. Otherwise, resolves NO when May 2031 OEWS data publishes (spring 2032).

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