I have to say I don't follow the "automation" aspect of what you're saying.
What makes "modern dev" more labor intensive than not "modern dev"?
Well it is, objectively, way broader and deeper than before the web explosion. Even aside from the web aspects - barely anyone did heavy database work back then. And if you had a reasonably firm grasp of one OO language - guess what, you were practically a "rock star" (well before the current usage of the term). You knew something about the differences between the Unix shells, and maybe something about inodes and fsck? Great, here's a "devops" (er, sysadmin) job for you.
Nowadays there's just (conservatively stated) at least an order of magnitude of basic "stuff", much of it conceptually independent from the rest, and a lot of it quickly obsolescing (almost as soon as it "matures") - that one has to have a reasonably firm grasp of, just to move the needle from A to B. Or at least not come off as "fossilized or "enterprisey", when talking to "hot" companies, these days (I've actually had the latter said to me, as a description of me, over the phone - after an interview).
So yes, objectively speaking - it's way more intense.