When I graduated college with a science degree in psychology and an arts degree in counseling, becoming a coder was a new thing. I tool a look at punch cards and Cobol and decided, "Naw".

And the real crazies at the local asylum scared the bejesus out of me, so I cut my hippy hair, bought a suit, went to the newest office tower on Central Expressway in Dallas, saw an interesting looking company on the Directory in the lobby, and went up and got a job. (it was around the corner from the very first Chili's, and near the nightlife on Greenville Ave, so that was also a factor!)

I picked up computer technology, or at least it's concepts and buzz words quickly, and was a success at recruiting and placing software engineers, which was a newish category of work at the time.

A year later, I opened the Boston-based companies first Office in the Silicon Valley. The moral of the story being that a surging industry provides indirect as well as direct employment of all sorts.

But with AI... well, if we are all alive a decade from now, there may be little need for workers at all, and with authoritarian govs, unneeded people are, well, disposable.