

The automation that AI is promising (but not necessarily delivering) is fundamentally different than the automation that came before.
Remember; the luddites were right but their industry was small enough that the displaced labour could be absorbed by other industries.
Not only is AI affecting almost every artistic and white-collar industry, but the cap-ex barrier to entry is way lower than for any other automation effort in the past. No need to buy expensive machines, or create whole new production lines just to test it out. Computers used to take up an entire room to do the work of a handful of people. If you can increase productivity but there is no associated increase in demand, then what you get is layoffs.
The amount of workers that this has the potential to displace far outstrips the industry/economy/society’s ability to replace with “new careers” (that we’ve yet to see materialize). And I challenge your assertion that automation has resulted in increased demand for human labour, do we significantly less unemployment on average? Over the last 70 years (in the USA for ex) unemployment has been trending up.
What we have seen is a total gutting of employee bargaining power.




Sure, over the course of like 200 years. Can you not see how that is fundamentally different?
“Afford” is doing a lot of work in your sentence. How do you think people are going to be able to afford more? Workers aren’t going to be making more money, and the workers who enter these professions are going to be making a lot less money.
No, it really isn’t.
Labour force participation rate is “how many working age people want a job” even if they’re unemployed.
Unemployment rate tells you “how much of the labour force can get a job” which is what we actually care about. Can you get a job if you want one. More people need jobs (as you have shown) but fewer percentage of those people are able to get jobs (as I’ve shown).\