The reduction of manual methodology in day to day tasks means less resource is required, and what might have taken a day or week to complete, now takes half the time.
I've worked for a foreign company, where they seemed to be intentionally opting for the less efficient methods of working in order to keep a set number of staff employed. This may not have been a conscious decision but, that is what it looked like to a few of us, which made me wonder if that was not such a bad thing... It might have just been poor listening on the management side but, I learnt that this lack of efficiency was considered widespread and common by choice, according to many of my colleagues who had experienced this with the same company and with other companies in that foreign country. For example, why opt for a costly piece of machinery to dig your land when you can employ twenty persons to do the same job without it costing you any additional finance over a set period.
Of course we love technology and, we certainly wouldn't want the research and development to stop but, do we need to use them if we can't place workers who lose their jobs to technological advancement into new jobs? Or will new technology still allow us to continue keeping as many people as possible in employment?