What purpose can you have in a world of automation?

Up to very recently, a man's identity (i.e., who he was in the community) was tied to what he did as a living.  If he was a tradesman in the Middle Ages, he could be known as one, e.g., John Smith, the town's man who worked with horses.  Then, when man worked in factories, he was identified with the product he made.  Today, automation has taken away many jobs from workers that they used to have, particularly on assembly lines and in maintaining company books. 

On the Washington Journal program aired December 3rd over C-Span, the findings of the current status of the working class was presented by its authors of Opportunity America, headed by Tamar Jacoby.  The statistics mentioned demonstrated that workers are experiencing a wage crunch caused by the necessity for workers to compete against computerized operations, wherein AI machines now make human intervention in productivity systems virtually obsolete. 

Even in agriculture, machinery, I am told, will soon displace countless farmer laborers in such activities as planting and harvesting crops! 

In a world of machinery and humans interacting on a continual basis, how is the human being to count for something?  How can he feel purposeful and his efforts needed and valuable?  Already, the unemployed can become despondent and irrelevant to today's active and productive atmosphere, which is presented him on TV.

This is becoming an ever increasing stark reality:  fewer jobs for the takers.

I think the paths to self-worth can be found in the government offices of unemployment who deal with workers who have not worked for many years.  Re-training isn't the answer for those over prime working age.  They may find themselves doing odd jobs around hospitals, volunteering to work with mentally challenged persons, like doing household jobs for them, and some even volunteer to do non-paying jobs in political campaigns.  The point is they are reaching out to make a contribution to society, in particular, in their community, whether or not they are gainfully employed.  For they are attending to the needs of other humans, which, hopefully, brings about greater happiness for all to share.