The statements about jobs not being destroyed is about _aggregate_ jobs. If you pick any specific group of people (or animals) you can find many examples of groups losing jobs. Hopefully this doesn't come as a surprise to you and hopefully you can see how these are different things. Markets shift, that's the whole point of markets, and when they do it's very painful for those they shift away from. The most poignant example of this is that a smaller percentage of Americans have jobs now than they did in the 70s (and even as recently as 2008). But those jobs have gone to other countries and perhaps there's a good reason for that.

> Saying that automation has not destroyed jobs is simply a lack of imagination on the part of these researchers.

I honestly burst out laughing at this, what do you think these researchers have failed to imagine? The idea of confining their view strictly to horse employment and not considering the employment as a whole? Researchers shouldn't be imaginative in how they approach experiments, they should be scientific and precise. If they don't like the results they get they shouldn't imagine new definitions of employment that justify their preconceived notions.