Whether or not we get the same number of jobs back out of the economy, the newer jobs are unlikely to be equivalent to the jobs lost. In general, the new jobs h

Whether or not we get the same number of jobs back out of the economy, the newer jobs are unlikely to be equivalent to the jobs lost. In general, the new jobs have different and higher skill requirements than the original jobs did. In the long term, this all balances out with new workers and education. In the short term, if this is a large enough disruption, it's probable that the actual people who are unemployed will either need long-term support of some time, or subsidized retraining (if even possible). While it's often neglected in these discussions, the short term disruption does matter for both moral reasons (we don't like to let people starve, or let them sit around doing nothing when we could retrain them); and for practical reasons (large numbers of unhappy and needy people can cause major social disruptions).