Though, I should say, that masks another contingency with possibly the same effect.
We have an economy which is predicated on cheap energy. As such it's frequently cheaper to produce goods by comparitively inefficient automated processes due to the reduction in manpower required, or to produce goods at distance from their end user as the reduction of labour costs from a remote supplier outweights the transportation costs.
It seems plausible that an energy scarce world could reverse the economics of both situations. It would have enough other consequences that I'm not at all suggesting it as some sort of worker's utopia, but greater employment may be an interesting side-effect.
