Who says simply wait. The cycle will remain basically identical to how it works now. There is a hand-crafted, high on innovation luxury set of the world that sells to the rich. Then there is a “almost luxury” set that’s starting to commoditize those innovations for the upper middle class. Then there is the mass produced section that sells that same stuff to the masses. The difference between now and the future is that third step now still involves a few people and in the future it will not.
Luxury goods will still be hand-crafted because that’s part of the cache, just as it is today, part of the uniqueness, part of the ego trip of the price tag. Rolls Royce and Bugatti and Ferrari and Lotus don’t use the assembly line that has produced every car you’ve ever owned because if they did they’d be one of the cars you’ve ever owned, they will continue to be luxury automakers and they will continue to take longer to make fewer cars with as many hands touching them as they can get long into the future because if you have a Ford assembly line you aren’t Rolls Royce. But that won’t be a source for a lot of jobs, because there isn’t enough demand for those products to employ a lot of people. There’s only so many people out there buying million dollar cars, and even if your corporate goal is to make sure 1000 people personally touch some part of every one of those cars that market limit will hard cap your employee count at an insignificant percentage of the populace.
I was under the impression that we were talking about eliminating the jobs of a lot more than "a few people". I think the objective of automation technology should not be the elimination of those jobs, but shortening the time it takes new technology and innovations to work their way down the stack.