That's a false choice if I ever heard one. Surely reasonably-paced increases in productivity could spawn job creation in other areas? And while modern-day capitalism is not exactly encouraging this, maybe we can take advantage of less manpower needed to make society function by having less time working (with a similar quality of life) for all? If there were only so many employment hours available, there are ways of distributing that other than raising the unemployment rate or artificially lowering it.