When 9 people can do the work of 10, the 10th person often finds themselves out of a job. It’s little different if your job type completely disappears or if the economy only needs half as many people doing your job, either way many people need a new type of job.
That's what the media has been screaming all these years. The reality is often that the 10th person has their role change, they retire off or (as in the case of the engraving industry), people end up buying more at a cheaper price.
Someone having their role change sounds fine, but it often means a skill and thus a longer term salary reset. Individually people may be better or worse off, but generally if you have 20+ years of experience doing something starting over is a major setback.
Granted for very slow transitions it’s not as big of a deal.
The one situation where I remember this happening specifically (when the BBC made footage archiving digital), they planned the automation rollout to coincide with retiring off the old analog librarians.
Then they hired them back out of retirement because the project went badly wrong.
The latter part went awry (although I think they didn't mind too much) but the timing kind of worked out.
In a more vicious corporation they probably wouldn't have been so bothered about the timing of the rollout.
