More generally the number of jobs hasn't seemed to drop drastically during any of these waves of automation, but the number of people employed in certain fields

More generally the number of jobs hasn't seemed to drop drastically during any of these waves of automation, but the number of people employed in certain fields has including some jobs disappearing entirely. That means automation doesn't present a problem for the economy overall, but it does present a problem for individuals who need to exist in the transitioning economy. The US in particular has done an awful job easing those individuals during the transition. The economy becoming more efficient is good. We should use some of the surplus value of increased efficiency to care for the people harmed by that transition.