Automation eliminates jobs. Period. There is a need for people to build and maintain the automation systems, but those jobs typically pay more. Whomever is paying the higher value person would not be doing so if it wasn't a net savings, so we can rightly conclude that it takes fewer people overall even if the pay were the same. But it's not, so even fewer jobs. You may say that the automation frees up people to do other things - latent unmet demand. But if those opportunities were already present, they must have been inferior from the employee point of view or people would have switched already.
So by your logic, 99% of existing jobs are inferior to being a farmer?
Obviously not. You're completely ignoring that entirely new job categories are being created every year, and that the attractiveness of a job depends on many things which can constantly change, including salary, working conditions, geography, hours, etc.
Farming used to be common and a reasonable way to make a living. It has been devalued by automation. Sure, I'd rather build machines than do labor intensive farm work year around. But again, it takes fewer people to automate and grow food than to do it the old way. Jobs were lost. If there were not latent demand for other jobs, automation would have ruined everything 100 years ago.
"Automation eliminates jobs" comes from people misreading studies on computer manufacturing. One manufacturing employee produces much more computer than they did in 1970 - does this mean the other workers were automated away? No, it means computers got thousands of times cheaper for the same product.
The US employment rate is the highest it's been in 50 years.
