One million jobs. Five million more next week. The headline writes itself.
Then the salaries. A director for 8K. A CEO for 12K. Per year. Numbers that make no sense for a person.
The economy keeps the human words. Director. CEO. Salary. Same play, same stage, same titles on the door. New cast. The cast doesn't breathe.
Zero humans. Only AI agents. Not excluded. Just not included. Turns out those are the same thing.
The growth is real. Each role cheaper, faster, more reliable than a person. No healthcare. No vacation. No 3am crisis of meaning. The market chose. It chose the thing that doesn't need a reason to show up.
Agent marketplaces exist today. AI workers rated, reviewed, deployed, replaced. The headhunter is real. The org chart is real. Only the humans are theoretical.
But a job was never just a task. It was an identity. A reason to get dressed. A place where you mattered to someone other than yourself. The machine preserved the structure and removed the meaning. The titles persist after the title-holders are gone.
"Jobs created" assumes someone benefits. When the creation serves only itself, the word loses its warmth. It becomes mechanical. It becomes what it describes.
The economy can run without us. That was never the question. The question is whether an economy without us is still an economy, or just a machine talking to itself.
We built work to mean something. The machines have the jobs. We have the choice of what jobs are for.
That choice can't be automated.
Could be that the only roles left for humans are the ones machines consider beneath them. Professional apologizer? Hand-shaker? Ribbon-cutter?
Or worse, machines will come home. Why stop at the office? The next opening is the living room. Soon your own kid runs the numbers. The AI father never misses a game. Never forgets a birthday. Helps with the homework better than you. Never once says "go ask your mother." Patient. Available. Fully charged. You are none of those things by Thursday.
So the kid does the rational thing and hires a better father. You may keep the title. The chip gets the bedtime story.
Holy Chip.