I definitely agree than automation will play a massive role. Machines and computers are replacing so many jobs. Even if you just consider drivers. What percentage of jobs in any given company are just driving? There are truck drivers, taxi drivers, bus drivers, food delivery drivers, couriers... I'm sure there will just be more and more self-driving cars in the future. All those drivers will be out of a job. You can go on and on about jobs that are being replaced by technology. Some call center jobs are even being replaced by automated systems that are actually starting to get pretty good. It's funny sometimes to see governments scramble to "create jobs". That's not going to be the solution. It has to be something bigger than that. I like that some countries are already experimenting with the idea of a universal income.
Yeah there's certainly a lot of make work projects going on as we try to catch up with our own inventions. This is causing an increase in competitiveness, which is in turn creating a knowledge based economy. A knowledge based economy is a key step forwards in prioritization of skills and abilities rather than strictly labor.
It's essentially making everyone more specialized and forcing out niche content. The trick here though is combining specializations. What is a Data Scientist? A coder/statistician. There are many examples of jobs like this that combine two fields into one.
There's a good article Michael Simmons wrote on it:
https://medium.com/the-mission/the-5-hour-rule-if-youre-not-spending-5-hours-per-week-learning-you-re-being-irresponsible-791c3f18f5e6