Going off on a tangent here:

There's a sci-fi novel I want to write some time...

You know how some countries have mandatory military service?

Well, what if all of the "Essential" jobs, all had mandatory service?

I want to do my own cherry-picking, selecting the "Essential" jobs, and especially those that are toilsome but that you can do with not a lot of training, and then do the math to see how many hours each able-bodied person in a country would need to do each job, in order to satisfy all of the needs of everyone in that society (able-bodied, or not.)

And then build up a story around some people who are finishing their Essential Jobs, and are deciding whether to Retire into living off the dole, or whether to transition into some Skilled labor to live in more luxury.

And then there's the fact that automation is making it so that less and less actual manual effort is required for the Essential jobs. So, does the society start categorizing new jobs as Essential, or do people end up with more discretionary time?

I feel like this would have made a pretty okay Star Trek culture to encounter...