Most jobs as defined today didn’t exist years ago. Just because a job disappeared doesn’t mean that employee never worked again obviously. You blamed high unemployment on automation and I disagree. I think it has more to do with jobs moving to India and China than it does automation.
But what jobs are going to exist in a world where almost everything is made by printers and/or robots? It’s a nice panacea to look at the past and say “well we always find something” but past performance isn’t always a predictor. Because the past didn’t have quite this level of technical jump. Previous tech jump went from needing people to do X to needing people to do Y, this round is looking to not need people to do anything other than consume.
India and China have been losing jobs to automation too. The global manufacturing sector is simply using less people to make more stuff.