To a certain extent, yes they are.  In any given society people must be able to do things to support themselves or the government must support them if there isn't any other means available.  We're taught in the US that you have to work hard and "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and other bullshit like this, but at a certain point our system is unsustainable.  Technology advances and one person can perform the work of dozens if not more, and that's not even considering automation.  Automation will make many jobs obsolete, so where are these people going to go to support themselves and their family?  You can't expect someone who has done one thing his entire life to start learning a new career from scratch, it's just not reasonable.  Jobs get phased out, but society doesn't really take care of those people afterwards. 

Companies should be incentivized to make more money, and make progress technologically, with automation or more efficiency or whatever.  But what shouldn't be happening is the majority of the profits just going back into the company.  We should be working as a society to make jobs easier for everyone in the workforce, in the country and eventually the entire world.  Instead we remove the jobs, tell people to fucking pull themselves up by their bootstraps(which is literally impossible to do by the way,) and let the owners and shareholders collect more and more wealth.  Eventually this can't continue, but we aren't quite there yet. 

This is where government should step in.  Regulations are EXTREMELY important to protect smaller businesses and average workers as well.  Look at Comcast, they basically dominate the entire market for cable in most of the US because no one is even allowed to compete with them.  Taxpayers paid for the lines to be built, and Comcast basically lobbies lawmakers to disallow anyone else to use them.  They have a stranglehold over most areas and no one can even compete, therefore they can price however they want, and treat customers however they want.  Now imagine if every industry was like this.  You need regulations to stop industries from exploiting everyone.

I realize I went a bit off topic from unemployment, but I believe all of these things are interconnected.  This whole "I got mine" mentality is never going to be able to work long term for the world.