Several thoughts..
If you look at old TV series or photos of offices you'll notice that businesses in the past employed far more office staff than today, across the board, You can pick almost any kind of work, in both goods and services. Everything was far more labor intensive in the past, requiring armies of workers.
Most generic business processes now are mostly handled by computing applications (including the web) with the office staff planning the operation of the business and handling the exceptions.
Large numbers of office jobs simply vanish with new advances in technology, within two or three years. Also large segments of businesses that used to be handled in house (fulfillment, shipping, delivery, etc.) is increasingly offloaded to specialized firms which handle the same task for hundreds or thousands or in some cases literally millions of businesses at once.
Everybody knows automation is increasing exponentially, but at least as many, perhaps more jobs will be moved overseas as a sort of bridge to their being automated. The next few years will be the beginning of a huge shift of jobs to the places where people have high levels of education but are paid much less.This has been in the pipeline for 20 years but the thing that's hanging them up is "non tariff barriers". What you call red tape of all kinds. But the ink is already dry, it has been for 20 years, its just the implementation thats been taking forever, because the different sides all want different things in exchange for what they want to give up.
The key term they repeat over and over is "efficiency gains".
Its more efficient where they can do the work in the cheaper countries with services just like it is with manufacturing. They claim that efficiency gains will mean many many people will be freed up to pursue their dreams.
The things that have been preventing them from being moved are what you call red tape. In the case of the UK, some of that was because of being in the EU. The jobs that before might have gone to Eastern European firms will likely end up much father away.
BTW, Tim Berners-Lee ("timbl") invented that remote control pen around 30 years ago at CERN, on his NeXT workstation, we're using it right now. Its making it possible for people everywhere to do work over the net.
Its impact on the workplace is still in its infancy compared to where we'll be in a decade or two. Hopefully the benefits of people being able to enter in their own data will accrue to more people around the world despite the falling wages. Its going to eliminate a lot of jobs but also create a substantial number of better ones.People will need different skills to do them, and will have to stay on top of the changes.
Slightly offtopic, but I thought that would happen and it hasn't. At least not in the UK. What I see happening here is that real jobs on the shop floor are becoming scarcer as machines take over, but that office jobs are multiplying like crazy. Some places have three to five times as many office staff as shopfloor workers.
The problem here is the EU and its mountains of regulations and red tape. Every time a new regulation comes out, that means firms having to employ another 'officer' just to ensure that they aren't at risk of being fined for noncompliance. In the nature of things bureaucratic these 'officers' have to be onsite; they can't work remotely. (Maybe if someone invented a remote controlled pen that ticks boxes over the Internet.. 
) Hence more cars, more traffic jams, more pollution. GDPR is a case in point right now.
The EU is one of the greatest promoters of climate change action, yet they are adding enormously to the problem of fuel wastage and pollution through their own red tape!
Do you understand that when neoliberals rail against 'regulation' they are talking about the things that made working more fulfilling and less destructive to peoples lives (like limits on how many hours people work in a work week, and prohibitions against dangerous workplaces, also laws that regulate the kinds of intra-corporate travel corporations would like to see much much more of.
The things you are talking about "competition" and "deregulation" and "eliminating red tape" will mean far far more job loss than new jobs. Most business owners see themselves as part of heir communities but huge mega corporations see themselves as being able to take their places on a large scale. That will cut out the middlemen for sure but there will be huge reductions in workers and the economies everywhere are likely to implode.
You understand that wages and benefits are all determined by
supply and demand, right? So even if only a few jobs percentage wise move elsewhere, wages will fall because the remaining workers will be forced to accept less and less for their time. Younger and older people especially will suffer because there is a clock icking for both of them much more so than for people in the middle. Also investments people have made in housing, (especially in areas where there used to be a lot of jobs but are no more) stocks (when they were valued by the business they did or by over optimistic potential people saw for hem, perhaps being quite unrealistic about this ticking time bomb driven by the GATS IOU to the developing world) . Even the developing countries, which were projected to grow rapidly wont because their export markets will collapse and their internal markets wont increase because of falling global wages. There isnt a single group that will benefit. However, those currently in power will maintain control and get a larger and larger slice of the pie, even as the value of that slice plummets.
People will lkely work for free to keep their skills honed.
Businesses are alredy taking advantage of this effect by means of internships, extended qusi-traing 'jobs' that pay just a token amount. The number of jobs which either pay very little or eventually where the workers pay to work will increase.
Many parents of would be workers will likely pay for them to gain work experience. When trade was truly free, businesses will likely get free workers. But would that be enough, if their customers can no longer buy things and vanish, whats the point?
Under those conditions, even though freely traded workers would save the business owners trillions, how would those workers survive? How would the businesses survive, buried by huge debts and likely their business assets would be auctioned off to pay them.
So, maybe inefficiency is more of a gain than efficiency now, huh?
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