This is a trend that begun with the industrial revolution.
I can list dozen of jobs that no longer exist because of automation (just from within my life time).
Businesses make financial decisions. They do not care if they employe a machine or a person. As long as they can get good quality work for low cost. If a person can do it, fine, if a machine can do it, that is also fine.
As someone else posted, government rules and regulations are making people more expense and trouble to hire and keep.
For individual businesses it makes sense to cut the number of real people and replace them with machines, but what will happen when the majority of people do not have a job or an income (other than welfare which is just a wealth transfer from those that are still working to those that are not)?
It is almost impossible to predict the future, but one thing can be predicted. No trend remains forever. Something will occur to change the way things are going.
I worked 35 years in a tier I automotive stamping plant and have seen first hand what automation and robotics have done for the industry.
I would say the vast majority of people driving their vehicles today have no idea what actually goes on in the auto plants and my plant in terms of automation. It's incredible........
I would highly recommend that everyone take advantage of the plant tours that are offered by some of the automakers