> Retail workers, factory workers, people who fill in the holes in roads, telephone support people, etc aren't contending with pointless meetings and busy work though. They can't do 40 hours of work in 32 hours by removing some of the hours they're not really working. What they do doesn't compress like that.

It depends.

In China, the tech companies are testing AI telephone support. My banks uses it, JD.com uses it, China UNICOM use it. If you dial to those companies, an AI will take the call and guide you through the process, no human interaction needed. Not only that, some AI will even call you to schedule appointments etc.

Another example is the supermarkets. Almost all supermarket in our city has deployed self-checkout stations, and some of them even laid off almost all but 1 or 2 of their checkout workers.

I assume this trend will eventually expand to other labor types, so the workload of those workers will be lighten as result. (But of course, we can keep the load the same, but laid off unnecessary people instead, which is more likely if the government don't intervene)