[ar4s]

This would have to be in a different industry though, no? Inherently the point of automation is to shrink the amount of labor required to do a task. So as to your comment and in my example of customer service, employees laid off from company A would need to acquire technical skills to manage the new automation in that industry (likely that company B has already, or will adopt), or move to a different industry completely.

The problem I see is that everyone is automating though. Or is it assumed that enough tasks can't be automated to actually effect unemployment?

[crazygringo]

It could be. The surplus flows to the owners of the company.

They can choose to a) re-invest it in the company, creating new jobs there, b) re-invest it in new/other companies, creating new jobs there, c) spend it, creating new jobs wherever the money is spent.

But yes, retraining is generally required to some degree -- as jobs become more productive, people need to learn how to do those jobs!