[d--b]

You don't really have to speculate. Automation is going to do to the service industry what globalization did to manufacturing. Manufacturing got "automated" away by sending work to places where labor costs next to nothing.

Did the offshoring of manufacture jobs create joblessness?

Actually I'm not sure what the answer to that is. According to statistics the US is running at full employment. According to pretty much every other source of information, regions where manufacturing used to happen are devastated by joblessness, drug addiction, and violence...

I don't know why there is such a disconnect.

[daliwali]

Because the unemployment rate is a lie. It is denominated by the "labor force", which, if one excludes those who are no longer seeking work or chronically unemployed, it's basically being dishonest with statistics. One does not have to feign ignorance as to why there is a disconnect between the statistics and the reality.

[maxerickson]

It's not a lie, it's a technical measure that people misinterpret.

If it was a lie you'd expect suppression of the further data.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

[daliwali]

There is no need to censor the data, as long as one can present it in a way that is favorable to a particular viewpoint. The fallacious argument being made with the unemployment rate lends itself to misinterpretation.

[BearGoesChirp]

Why would we expect such? The best lies are the ones that provide deniability, have enough truth to satisfy some, and yet mislead to the extent desired.

Creating a measurement that gets blasted on the front page of news that is largely misinterpreted, while keeping the actual figures out of public view enough so that only a small fraction of the population sees it seems to not be too different from a lie.