There are some nasty potential error sources when comparing productivity per country over time because they use different currencies with their own value changes over time. (Probably related to productivity, but lots of other factors)
And my biggest issue was the Wells Fargo twitter chart. Average growth per year is an ok tool, but it's simplistic. It gets really messed up when you consider a 5 year time frame 98-03 and a 10 year 04-14. With the straight averaging method compounded growth/loss gets messed up.
But the point is that society as a whole is richer because you can get a good from a manufacturer to a customer with less overall spending, and so while an individual inventory manager may or may not be able to get another job -- and might legitimately suffer -- ultimately the business does grow, and there are more jobs created than destroyed (though the created jobs may not be inventory manager jobs, and the displaced inventory managers may or may not ultimately benefit).
Except managers are "sticky", and generally aren't fired merely because they are less burdened. All jobs not just managers are in truth sticky, but in general the more status a job has, and the more high status interactions a job has the greater the difficulty in removing the position.
A lot of companies became much more productive on paper during the recession, not because they did massive changes, but because they were forced to finally cut some staff. Like a cheesy 80s movie they had the productivity inside themselves all along, but it took the need to trim budgets to expose that productivity.
Of course a lot of companies never actually really pared down things, or not enough to really boost their productivity. It just isn't simple to get that productivity to reveal itself, especially outside of an existential threat.