Instead, we live in a time of technological marvels, and the unemployment rate is 4.2 percent. Rob Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation points out that the average unemployment rate in the United States hasn’t changed much over the last century, despite an increase in productivity — the ability to produce more with the same inputs — by almost ten times.
Technology increases productivity, driving down costs and making it possible to invest and spend on other things, creating new jobs that replace the old. This is the process of a society becoming wealthier, and it’s why nations that innovate are better off than those that don’t.
The rise of personal computers collapsed the demand for typists and word processors. These positions were often held by women. Did this decimate the economic prospects of women in America? No, they got different, and frequently better, jobs.