I could not disagree more. We are probably working the least hours as a total number of waking hours of the total population than we ever have as a species. Automation has always decreased the amount of work that needed to be done. Now admittedly "work needing to be done" is different from "employment" but I would argue that the less work that needs to be done, the less easy it is to create paying jobs to pay people to do those non-things. Yes many of the "workers" of the 1800s were domestic and not counted on wage payrolls... and we had a lot of them shift into the "work force" and begin getting wages in the 1900s. But that's not to say there is a net trend away from work and pay rolls. If we don't wake up and see this problem the inequality situation will continue to get worse.