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Viliam_Bur comments on The Robots, AI, and Unemployment Anti-FAQ - Less Wrong
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A possible explanation: You can't have a IQ-70 person doing the work that needs IQ 130, but you can have it the other way round.
So maybe in the past many people were too smart for their jobs (because most things that needed to be done were stupid), and when those jobs were automated away, the smart people moved to do smarter things. This continued for some time... until all the smart people left the stupid jobs. Now when yet more stupid jobs are automated away, the remaining stupid people have nowhere to go.
In a story format:
There was a farmer with three sons -- one was smart, one was average, one was stupid. At the beginning all three sons were needed to work on the farm, otherwise there would not be enough food for them to survive.
Then the farmer bought a machine, so only two sons were needed at the farm. The smartest son left the farm and became a scientist.
Then the farmer bought another machine, so only one son was needed at the farm. The average son left the farm and became a clerk.
The the farmer bought a third machine, so no sons were needed at the farm. The stupid son left the farm and became... unemployed, because he was too stupid to do anything else than farm work.
(Why did this happen now, and not during the previous years when the former sons were leaving?)
Also, maybe eventually the farmer finds another machine that does even better work, except he himself isn't smart enough to run it. But his neighbor is, and eventually buys enough to buy the farmers land. Soon instead of hundreds of famers with their own machines, you have a dozen.
Taking an analogy too literally, I think. :-P
I'm not sure if the point I was making, such as it was, reduces down to the same "This leads to less people needed per machine, and the replaced people can't easily go elsewhere," or if there is a fundamental difference with the farmer not being able to pass on his land & occupation and no longer having a stake in the process.