Evidence since 2021 shows that Friedberg’s directional claim has largely played out.

First, low‑income labor did become scarce and more expensive.

• The "Great Resignation" disproportionately hit hospitality and other low‑wage, in‑person sectors, with very high quit rates and persistent worker shortages in accommodation, food service, and retail.(en.wikipedia.org)
• By mid‑2025, wage growth in leisure and hospitality was still outpacing overall inflation, driven by ongoing labor shortages, even though pay levels remained relatively low.(businessinsider.com)

Second, adoption of automation and similar “deflationary” technologies clearly accelerated in response, especially in low‑wage sectors.

• Warehouse and logistics surveys in 2022–23 show chronic understaffing (10–25% shortfalls, especially in material handlers and forklift drivers) and report that labor shortage is the top driver of warehouse automation; a majority of executives planned near‑term automation deployments for that reason.(sdcexec.com)
• A 2021 survey of 1,250 business owners found ongoing labor shortages pushing firms toward automation; three‑quarters had considered or invested in automation, and over half of those expected to permanently cut back labor as a result. Retail, hospitality and food service were among the affected sectors.(ppai.org)
• In retail, market research explicitly cites rising labor costs and workforce shortages as the primary driver of the self‑checkout boom; retailers implementing self‑checkout reduced cashier headcount by ~25% while keeping transaction volumes, directly substituting technology for low‑wage cashiers.(emergenresearch.com)
• Restaurants and fast‑food chains have scaled kitchen and ordering automation (robots like Flippy/Chippy, AI drive‑throughs, partially automated/“mostly automated” restaurants, and robotics for specific prep tasks such as Chick‑fil‑A’s lemon‑squeezing system), all framed as efficiency and cost responses in a tight labor market.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Globally, fully unattended AI kiosks and robotic systems in retail and food service are being sold explicitly as a solution to a “permanent labor crisis,” operating 24/7 without staff.(worldfoodservicesjournal.com)

Third, self‑driving trucks have moved from concept toward early commercial deployment, motivated by driver shortages and costs, though still at limited scale.

• Autonomous‑trucking firms like Gatik, Aurora, Kodiak, and Waabi/Volvo have launched or are ramping commercial driverless freight routes (e.g., Dallas–Houston in Texas, middle‑mile retail/grocery routes), presented as solutions to driver shortages and high operating costs.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Industry analysis projects autonomous trucks to grow at ~25% annually through 2044, with hundreds of thousands of Level‑4 “autonomous drivers” expected to support the global trucking fleet, specifically to improve total cost of ownership and address labor‑related challenges.(prnewswire.com)
  While this is still early and not yet a dominant share of trucking, the direction and motivation match Friedberg’s forecast.

Fourth, there is evidence this automation has partially offset wage‑driven cost pressures rather than eliminating them.

• In retail, self‑checkout deployments that cut cashier staffing by ~25% while maintaining throughput mean that total labor cost per transaction can fall even when hourly wages rise—exactly the kind of partial offset to wage inflation he described.(emergenresearch.com)
• At the macro level, U.S. productivity growth picked up in 2023–24 while unit labor costs grew more slowly (around 2% year‑over‑year in late 2024), which economists see as helping to control inflation despite higher nominal wages.(reuters.com)
• Research on AI and automation finds that “automation AI” reduces employment and wages in low‑skilled occupations, consistent with technology substituting for low‑wage labor and dampening some of the upward wage pressure.(arxiv.org)

Taken together, these points show that since late 2021 there has been:

1. sustained scarcity and rising cost of low‑income labor;
2. an acceleration in adoption of software automation and related technologies (including early self‑driving trucking) specifically to address those shortages and wage costs; and
3. evidence that this increased automation has improved productivity and reduced labor needs per unit of output, thereby partially offsetting wage‑driven cost and price pressures in those sectors.

Given that Friedberg’s claim was directional and explicitly about partial mitigation rather than a full cure for inflation, the prediction is best judged as right.