This thread reminded me of a paper I read (and posted on C77!) in 2006/2007. It was an OCED report on manufacturing. It showed that the real number of manufacturing jobs worldwide was falling, including China. I’m sure this trend has continued since.
Despite losing manufacturing jobs to robots, automation and better management, global poverty has continued to rapidly fall and the global economy seems at least stable.
More importantly for design, I think there has never been a bigger variety of products. This will give us a huge market for our skills for the next 20 years at least. Even after that, computers are good at synthesizing existing data. I wonder if they can make the kind of abrupt shifts that humans can (like grunge music or psychedelic graphic design)?