Really?
Do you mean: "Being paid to do soul-crushing work is better than not being paid" ?
Or: "Doing soul-crushing work is better than having nothing to do" ?
The first is an issue of income and the distribution of product (in the GDP sense of product). There is no axiomatic rule that says "you have to have a job to get paid", it's just how our current economy operates.
If I owned a farm that produced a variety of food in excess of the needs of my whole family, but was totally operated by self-maintaining robots, would I need to have a job? The robots would produce all the food I need, and I could sell the excess in order to obtain other goods.
I guess I could say my job was "farmer" or "grocery salesman" or "robot supervisor", but I wouldn't actually being doing work.
If I am a truck driver, and I own my own truck and I make an income by transporting goods, and then I convert my truck to be self-driving so that I no longer need to be the driver, then (if we temporarily ignore external price pressures) I still make the same income as I used to. But I'm just reaping the benefits of my self driving truck, I don't actually "work" anymore (or at least to nowhere near the extent I used to).
But if I am a truck driver, and someone else owns the truck and I make an income by being contracted to transport goods, and then they convert my truck to be self-driving so that I no longer need to be the driver, then I no longer make any income, and I'm screwed. The owner of the truck reaps incredible benefits, and I don't actually "work" anymore, but I also don't have an income.
That's how things work in our society, but it doesn't have to be that way. There's no universal moral law that says that the first ex-truck-driver should continue to be paid for doing nothing much, but the second ex-truck-driver needs to get off his butt and go find a new soul-crushing job so that he can earn an income.
As our economies change to produce more output with fewer workers, there becomes less useful work for the citizens to do, even though GDP is increasing. That ought to be a good thing (economically) - more "stuff we want", less effort to produce it. But it won't actually being a good thing for the general population unless we move to a different model for the distribution of income, so that there's a way for the populace to share in the increased productivity even though their manual labour is no longer needed.
That where ideas like "Universal Basic Income" (UBI) come in.