Improvements in consumer technology is arguably offset by lots of areas of the economy becoming less efficient every year. Consider infrastructure, health care and education - those sectors require more labor now to produce the same or less output than they use to.

Declining real wages for decades are my evidence that supply curves are ahead of demand curves. I don’t see why education needs more labor, the number of children will be declining for the foreseeable future. More importantly, the buyers of that labor (government) are famously stingy and with budgets already strained with pension and other debt, I doubt they’re going to give up any extra wage gains.

not that we should go back, but it's worth noting that women entering the workforce probably greatly increased the supply side of the equation. Concurrently we're needing less and less people whilst also trying to figure out what to do with all this new supply introduced.

Yes, that was also a huge factor.

And yet, people are still helpful. I go to the lowes search bar and draw a total blank. I can describe a part I need to another human, but I sure as hell don't know its archaic catalog name, and will probably buy the wrong part if I order online. As a result, even in a pandemic, all the hardware stores by me have lines wrapped around the parking lot because brick and mortar is just better from a consumer perspective.

I've been fleeced buying junk online, from amazon or even less shady places, too many times for whatever price efficiencies online offers to work itself above actually handling the product before you put money down and own it. Running to fedex to print and ship my amazon return is a cost to bear if you have a busy life.

I know people are helpful. The point is that fewer people can do more.

Which means increased productivity.