People have been complaining about automation since there has been automation.

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.