There's no reason those days can't return, we would just have to make it happen. A ton of places are hiring, and a lot of it is knock-on effects from Covid. Over a million people died, that's going to leave a hole in the economy. Other people decided to go back to school and get better jobs (which was always what they were told to do when they complained about working conditions, so can we fault them?) and others realized that the expenses of child or elderly care made working just not make sense. A lot of people have left the job hunt, and not necessarily just because they're lazy.

The future you envision with automatons is not unrealistic. It's basically what happened with computers, and why productivity and wages decoupled in the 80s. What's the solution? Stronger civics and unions. Why, for example, should bringing on an automaton electrician make everyone else on the job site unemployed? The same number of people could be kept on and, with robotic assistance, earn more for the same amount of work or earn the same for less work. One single employee would never be able to negotiate that, but with everyone's power combined then it is possible.