I've described it before about how deeply American culture has a "work problem" and that it is as much a religion as anything. We don't call it a "Protestant Work Ethic" without reason, and lot of what you hear people say about jobs and work these days wouldn't sound much different from what the Puritans (who get credit as some of the earliest American colonists) preached as core to their way of life.

To some extent as the culture has gotten less dogmatic in some areas, the dogma of work has only entrenched further. (To many people the big corporate passive aggressive notes from belly of HR about the "good of the company" are the closest to people's weekly and/or daily sermons that they'll see.)

There are a lot of people, pundits especially, that see work as a moral obligation and the lack of work as a sin. I think it will take as much as anything else a new wave of religious thinking to move American culture past some hangups into a future with fewer "jobs" available. Or a redefinition of a lot more hobbies and crafts as "jobs" and "work". (I'm not sure which would be easier. There are stigmas in both directions.)