| In the USA, male participating in the wage economy has been in the decline since the 1940s: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LNS11300001 For women, the peak was in 2000: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USALFPWNA Wages for men have been in decline since 1973, which demonstrates one of the obvious ways people deal with declining opportunities: lower wages. In the 1800s Western nations conquered the world, and were thus able to export their unemployment to other countries, thus creating what we now call The Third World. As late as 1820, India was still producing more steel than Europe, but all such industries were eventually closed in India and moved to Europe, leaving India in a bad situation from which it is yet to fully recover. It's unlikely that Western nations will have an easy time exporting their unemployment in the 2020s or 2030s. Among other things, they lack the military power that is necessary to do so. |
If you look at this example, it'll show overall labour force participation actually rose between 1960 and 2000 for employees of every age under 60 http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/09/art3full.pdf Admittedly that trend is unlikely to have continued through the last recession, but it's pretty hard evidence against the doom-mongers of the 1960s at least. And it's remained resilient against a number of trends other than automation, not least a marked tendency to export jobs rather than unemployment to the developing world.
Manchester cotton might not have been welcomed by India's textile manufacturers, but I'm baffled by the suggestion that the British decimated the Indian steel industry (I mean, quite apart from everything I've ever read on the subject suggesting Indian steel production vastly increased in the 19th century - railways being more steel-intensive than ceremonial sword production - an Indian family conglomerate now owns the British steel industry!)