About the index
An open measure of how close paid work is to becoming optional
The Optional Work Index asks a single question and tries to answer it with evidence: how fast are technology, AI, and robotics changing the economics of work, and how close is any given country to the point where paid employment becomes optional rather than necessary? It is published as an open index, with the method and data sources stated plainly so that the figures can be checked, challenged, and reused.
Most discussion of automation measures only whether machines can do the work. That is half the question. Work is optional only when machines can do it and people can afford to stop. The index measures both and reports them separately, then combines them by geometric mean so that neither side can mask the other. A country can lead the world in automation and still score low if the gains are not shared widely enough for people to step back from work.
The index covers 150 scoring entities, including the United States, the European Union as a bloc, China, India, and 146 further countries, grouped into seven categories from major AI and automation powers to low-income, high-informality economies. One fixed method is applied to all of them; only the underlying data differs. Country and category figures are available from the global directory.
The project also publishes the National AI Compute Index, a separate measure of each country's effective AI compute: the reliable, affordable, accessible, and strategically controlled processing capacity available to its startups, researchers, enterprises, and public institutions. See the compute access page.
The Optional Work Index is created and published by Disnesta Research. Figures may be cited with attribution to the Optional Work Index. The index is provided for research and public-interest purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, legal, or policy advice. Questions or corrections: owi@disnesta.com.
The index is organized around a widely discussed projection that AI and robotics could make paid work optional within roughly ten to twenty years, attributed to public statements by Elon Musk (2024). The index is not affiliated with or endorsed by him, and it treats the projection as a hypothesis to be measured against evidence rather than a forecast it adopts.