Methods

What the atlas measures, and what it does not.

The atlas is a measurement system for work activities, skills, country variation, products, and trade-facing technology channels. It is not a causal estimate of realized adoption, displacement, wages, or productivity.

Measurement infrastructure

The live pipeline, branch by branch.

Start with the summary map below. If you want the full stage-by-stage pipeline, switch to the detailed view and inspect individual LLM passes, retain rules, and prepared datasets.

Raw dataLLM actionRule-based transformPrepared datasetPublic outputOutside scope
Start with the summary map, then switch to Detailed stages only if you want the full pipeline step by step.

Raw inputs

Reference assets for tasks, skills, products, countries, and trade.

Task-skill branch

Build and retain the task-skill graph.

Task automation branch

Country-conditioned task labeling and benchmark construction.

Product/service branch

Link products and services to tasks, then classify role of use.

Country and trade branch

Project the role-labeled network through trade and tariff context.

Aggregation and public outputs

Prepare public explorer layers, paper figures, and downloads.

Boundaries

Questions the atlas does not estimate directly.

Measurement framework

Four reporting dimensions

The current paper reports exposure level, technology channel, labour margin, and implementation dependency under a common measurement framework.

Benchmark constructions

Matched context-free benchmark and GDP-weighted synthetic global

The comparison keeps the measurement framework fixed. What changes is the presence or absence of country context when the benchmark is constructed.

Task-skill structure

Validated many-to-many links are retained

The atlas keeps validated many-to-many links between tasks and skills rather than forcing a thin one-to-one map before exposure is measured.

What the atlas does measure

  • Technical exposure of tasks under a common framework
  • Many-to-many links between tasks and skills
  • Cross-country differences in task exposure
  • Goods- and services-facing product/task role structure
  • Trade-facing country-task mechanism patterns

What the atlas does not measure

  • Realized adoption
  • Worker displacement
  • Wages or productivity effects
  • Organizational redesign
  • Causal policy or trade effects

Limitations

Keep the interpretation disciplined.

Country conditioning is still model-mediated rather than a direct observation of realized institutions. The goods and services layers have their own coverage boundaries, and the site repeats those coverage notes wherever the trade-facing layer appears.