I’m not familiar with the US, but here in the UK we’ve had fairly low unemployment for a while, in particular long term unemployment was under 400k, most unemployed were between jobs. We also had a lot of unfilled positions. The skills gap was and still is a pressing problem.
Somebody will bring up strong AI. I’ve been hearing about that being imminent my entire life, no joke, and I’m 55 in a few weeks.
How long until your favorite restaurant gets rid of servers? You will order through a screen at your table, then they will conveyer belt your food to you.
Automation isn’t going to happen like that, although I am unsure what the obstacle is for something as basic as fast food.
All the tech is there. Automatic burger machines have been here since the 70s. Ordering can be done through a phone app. Where is the bottleneck?
Now if selling hamburgers can not be automated I would like to know how something more complex like political strategism or software engineering or market analysis is supposed to be automated.
Also tariffs cost a fortune to the economy and generally depress consumption a lot more than they boost employment. One reason is investors are very wary of capitalising local production baed on tariffs that could disappear at any time. It's a very precarious basis on which to build a business. The increased costs to customers per job can be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I'm absolutely no fan of subsidies, they're a terrible distortion of incentives, but they're many, many times less godawfully wasteful than tariffs. It's also much easier to see where the money goes and measure success (or, more likely, failure).