No. The ideal number of employees is the number that maximizes the sum of all future profit. This may be zero employees but isn't required to be.
> Nobody owes anybody a job. Literally the only reason anyone has one is because there was a problem at some point in that business that required a human to do some part of the work. Building on that, if that ever becomes not the case, for a particular person or team or department of human employees, the natural next action is to get rid of them.
Because it is expensive to find, hire, and train new employees, companies are highly incentivized to find other work for an employee whose work becomes automated. In fact, a lot of value is created when work becomes automated so that employees can do tasks with higher complexity.
> So now we have three pieces. The ideal number of employees is zero, companies are extremely unhappy with their current workforces, and just now —starting in 2023 and 2024, it is actually becoming possible to replace human intelligence tasks with technology.
Employees' work has been automated countless times in the past. They just end up doing other stuff. This is the trap that Keynes fell into when he projected we'd love eventually never do work because everything was becoming more efficient.
When everything becomes automated, we invent work to be done.
When you make wider lanes, more people drive. More capacity generates more supply.