Policy is by far the greatest factor, but it doesn't help that businesses no longer need as many employees to get things done. Compare profits per employee at new companies like Airbnb to old companies like Hilton. They are off by orders of magnitude due to automation.
I don't think it's a catalyst either. By and large, businesses that are shedding employees are doing so because they can outsource the labor or because demand is low.
>Compare profits per employee at new companies like Airbnb to old companies like Hilton.
Profits per employee is a terrible measure. Airbnb doesn't require a lot of employees because they've essentially outsourced the labor to their customers. The house you're staying in wasn't cleaned by them, but it was probably cleaned by somebody. You were greeted by somebody that wasn't them also. That's not automation; that's arbitrage.
Hilton hotels probably raised their profits per employee by contracting out their cleaning to agencies.
Well, if you pretend the 1.2 million people working at Foxconn in China magically don't exist or are some special kind of robot, yes, those 5 folk are all that are needed.