Skip to content
Singulariki

Speech Recognition

Ability · O*NET work requirement

The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.

In the O*NET occupational database, Speech Recognition is an ability that work requires. O*NET rates how important it is (1–5) and what level of it a job needs (0–7) for every U.S. occupation. It is rated as important (3 or higher) in 804 of 894 occupations.

Breadth here means how widely O*NET rates this ability as important across occupations — not that it is rare, high-paying, or currently in employer demand.

Occupations that rely most on Speech Recognition

Ranked by O*NET importance to the occupation (1–5). Bars are sized against the 1–5 scale; the level column is what depth of the ability the job needs (0–7).

Occupation Importance Score Level
Education Administrators, Kindergarten through Secondary 4.3 4.4
Emergency Medicine Physicians 4.3 4.1
Speech-Language Pathologists 4.3 5.4
Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners 4.1 4.1
Mental Health Counselors 4.1 4.5
Travel Agents 4.1 4.0
Acute Care Nurses 4.0 3.6
Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nurses 4.0 4.0
Advertising Sales Agents 4.0 4.0
Air Traffic Controllers 4.0 4.4
Broadcast Announcers and Radio Disc Jockeys 4.0 4.0
Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School 4.0 3.5
Chief Executives 4.0 4.5
Chief Sustainability Officers 4.0 3.9
Clergy 4.0 4.5
Clinical and Counseling Psychologists 4.0 4.1
Coaches and Scouts 4.0 4.0
Critical Care Nurses 4.0 4.0
Customer Service Representatives 4.0 3.3
Dispatchers, Except Police, Fire, and Ambulance 4.0 4.1
Education Administrators, Postsecondary 4.0 4.0
Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education 4.0 3.9
Equal Opportunity Representatives and Officers 4.0 4.0
Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants 4.0 4.1
Exercise Physiologists 4.0 3.9
First-Line Supervisors of Non-Retail Sales Workers 4.0 4.0
Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary 4.0 4.5
Fundraisers 4.0 4.0
Healthcare Social Workers 4.0 4.0
Human Resources Managers 4.0 4.6
Industrial-Organizational Psychologists 4.0 4.1
Instructional Coordinators 4.0 4.1
Intelligence Analysts 4.0 4.1
Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates 4.0 4.0
Loan Interviewers and Clerks 4.0 4.0
Lodging Managers 4.0 4.0
Marriage and Family Therapists 4.0 4.0
Medical Transcriptionists 4.0 4.3
Meeting, Convention, and Event Planners 4.0 3.9
Naturopathic Physicians 4.0 4.0

Showing the top 40 of 804 occupations where this is important.

How AI is used by roles that need Speech Recognition

This ability is not itself "being automated" — but we can look at the roles for which O*NET rates it important and ask how those people actually use AI. This rolls the Anthropic Economic Index per-role signal up across those roles (importance-weighted). 61.1% of the 804 roles where this is important carry observed AI-usage data (491 roles).

Across those roles, 46.3% of AI conversations are people working with AI and 32.1% hand a task to AI , with an average autonomy of 3.56 / 5.

Collaboration pattern Share What it means
directive 29.9% AI does it; you give the instruction
task iteration 24.4% you and AI go back and forth
learning 19.1% you ask AI to explain or teach
validation 2.8% you do it; AI checks your work
feedback loop 2.2% AI does it, then adjusts from your feedback

Roles behind this signal

The roles where this ability is most important and that also have the most AEI data. "Works with AI" is the role's share of conversations that augment rather than automate.

Occupation Importance Works with AI Autonomy
English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary 3.4 63.2% 4.0/5
Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary 3.8 63.2% 4.0/5
Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary 4.0 65.2% 3.0/5
Editors 3.9 68.2% 4.0/5
Educational, Guidance, School, and Vocational Counselors 3.6 70.6% 4.0/5
Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary 3.8 67.2% 3.5/5
Instructional Coordinators 4.0 53.1% 4.0/5
Poets, Lyricists and Creative Writers 3.0 46.2% 4.0/5
Education Teachers, Postsecondary 3.9 65.3% 3.5/5
Office Clerks, General 3.4 36.5% 3.0/5
Recreation and Fitness Studies Teachers, Postsecondary 3.4 66.2% 3.3/5
Communications Teachers, Postsecondary 3.8 65.7% 3.0/5

Source: Anthropic Economic Index (2026-01-15-v4-plus-2025-03-27-v2) over a sample of Claude.ai Free and Pro conversations — not all AI tools and not the whole workforce. Shares are of observed conversations, weighted by how important this ability is to each role; some conversations are left unclassified by Anthropic's taxonomy, so shares need not sum to 100.

Industries that concentrate this

Where Speech Recognition matters most across the economy. Employment reach is the share of an industry's workers in occupations that significantly rely on Speech Recognition (O*NET importance ≥ 3 of 5). Concentration compares that reach to the national average industry, so a value above 1× means the requirement is more pervasive here than across the economy as a whole.

Nationally, about 81.2% of workers are in occupations that significantly rely on Speech Recognition (measured across 67 industries).

Sectors with the most such workers

Sector Workers Employment reach
Health Care and Social Assistance 17,236,720 74.6%
Retail Trade 13,882,350 89.0%
Accommodation and Food Services 12,449,360 87.5%
Educational Services 11,053,270 81.0%
Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services 9,836,700 91.3%
Manufacturing 8,837,270 69.2%
Construction 7,050,620 86.8%
Finance and Insurance 5,880,230 94.4%
Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services 5,738,730 63.5%
Transportation and Warehousing 5,457,120 73.8%
Wholesale Trade 4,983,350 82.6%
Other Services (except Public Administration) 3,552,400 80.3%

Industries where it is most concentrated

Industry Level Concentration Employment reach
Offices of Chiropractors National industry 1.23× 99.5%
Pharmacies and Drug Retailers National industry 1.22× 99.0%
Veterinary Services National industry 1.22× 98.9%
Offices of Optometrists National industry 1.22× 99.2%
Insurance Agencies and Brokerages National industry 1.21× 98.2%
Labor Unions and Similar Labor Organizations National industry 1.2× 97.4%
Offices of Physical, Occupational and Speech Therapists, and Audiologists National industry 1.18× 96.0%
Poured Concrete Foundation and Structure Contractors National industry 1.18× 95.5%
Radio Broadcasting Stations National industry 1.18× 95.8%
Sporting Goods Retailers National industry 1.17× 95.2%
Newspaper Publishers National industry 1.17× 95.0%
Television Broadcasting Stations National industry 1.17× 95.4%

Reach is a measure of how widespread a requirement is across an industry's workforce, not how intensively any individual uses it. Sector worker counts come from BLS OEWS employment; the significance threshold and tool use come from O*NET. Industries shown by concentration are filtered to a real worker base so a tiny specialty cannot top the list on rounding.

Capabilities required by many of the same occupations — a measure of which skills, knowledge and abilities tend to travel together, not a judgment of similarity.

Capability Type Shared occupations
Speech Clarity Ability 765
Oral Expression Ability 791
Oral Comprehension Ability 798
Speaking Basic skill 765
Active Listening Basic skill 777
Problem Sensitivity Ability 781
Near Vision Ability 797
Information Ordering Ability 769
Critical Thinking Basic skill 751
Deductive Reasoning Ability 749
Written Comprehension Ability 716
English Language Knowledge 729

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

Cite this page
Plain

Singulariki. "Speech Recognition." Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Built from O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; Census NAICS 2022; Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27). Accessed June 7, 2026. https://singulariki.com/abilities/speech-recognition

APA

Singulariki. (2026). Speech Recognition. Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Retrieved June 7, 2026, from https://singulariki.com/abilities/speech-recognition

BibTeX
@misc{singulariki-speech-recognition,
  title  = {Speech Recognition},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; Census NAICS 2022; Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27). Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/abilities/speech-recognition}
}

Citations name the underlying public dataset releases — they reflect what this page is built from, not just the URL.