You bring up yet another factor that needs to be considered to make a fair comparison. The demographics of the work force. That made me think about how much bigger the agricultural sector used to be and I don't think self-employed farmers and ranchers were counted in employment figures then. I have seen the point made that the self-employed are not counted today which is a much larger part of the white collar sector today.
Making comparisons to sixty years ago is a rather complicated project.
Indeed.
There were probably many more bananas eaten by Americans in 2008 than in 1945, meanwhile probably fewer cigarettes smoked. Who knows what either might mean.
I think that the observations about that "number" of jobs lost assertion (don't know if it is indeed a fact), were made just to point out its simplism.