Depending on how much gets automated and how quickly, yes that could be a temporary, short-term problem. I personally think the transition will happen slowly enough that it'll barely be noticeable, but if I'm wrong and we somehow automate 50M people out of a job in the space of a few years, that will indeed lead to an oversupply in the labor market, temporarily resulting in high unemployment and low wages for workers with the affected skillsets (including unskilled workers).
Where displaced workers will go though is not something that can or should be planned out in a centralized fashion, because the best answer to that question is different for each individual and depends on their skills, preferences, and life situation, balanced against the needs and desires of other consumers in the unimaginably complex web that is the global economy.
Despite not knowing exactly where everyone will end up though, I think I can still be confident that they will find something, because the incentives to do so are very strong, both on a personal level (needing to find work) and the entrepreneurial level (finding useful things for displaced workers to do could make you very rich).
As another commenter put it a while back, unemployed workers are an unused resource, and the economy is very good at finding uses for unused resources.
Where displaced workers will go though is not something that can or should be planned out in a centralized fashion, because the best answer to that question is different for each individual and depends on their skills, preferences, and life situation, balanced against the needs and desires of other consumers in the unimaginably complex web that is the global economy.
Despite not knowing exactly where everyone will end up though, I think I can still be confident that they will find something, because the incentives to do so are very strong, both on a personal level (needing to find work) and the entrepreneurial level (finding useful things for displaced workers to do could make you very rich).
As another commenter put it a while back, unemployed workers are an unused resource, and the economy is very good at finding uses for unused resources.