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I think this is overstated, looking over broad employment statistics. Even if we assume all of management, business, sales, education, healthcare, office and administration, and community service are gone (that's most of the big ones), and halve food service, what remains is 67M and 20% of 330M is (lazily fudging the difference between FTE and employment) ... also ... 67M. However, american 'living standards are a lot more than that. According to a graph I didn't look into, 55% of american healthcare spending is on the under 65 - and few want to give up good healthcare at 78. For every competent male doctor there might be several less-skilled female assistants, but they do load-bearing work. A lot of management is wasteful, but at least half is probably isefi;. Same for business, and to a much lesser extent administration and sales. Even sales plays a role in living standards - a medical device or industrial salesperson play roles in getting people their final goods. I'm ignoring the second-order effects you mention, but I don't think they're particularly strong. All the now unemployed people will still demand the living standards and products they did before, which will still require construction, transportation, lawn care, healthcare workers, etc. I'm also including 'continued improvement in technology and consumer goods' as a part of living standards, which seems reasonable, as few would want to give them up. Reintroducing half of what was cut brings us to 30%. I'm not confident in this though. I don't see room for easy efficiency improvements in gardening or repair, but construction's famous cost overruns and delays suggests room for cuts.
Now, that's if you fix living standards. Acknowledging that much of that is an empty simulacra - wow, neatly manicured greens! personal food service! plastic trinkets, from factory to your doorstep! therapeutic shopping for cute clothing! Vacations to tourist traps that could just as well be ten miles away! endless flavorings and combinations of the same foods, heroic healthcare efforts to let obese 78yos watch a few more years of TV, that's a stronger point. Cut a lot of that and you're at <12% easily.
Economics suggessts living standards might, so long as labor is still mostly human-driven, expand to use much of available labor. Economics is "neutral to the utility functions of agents", so it doesn't prove that - there are separate reasons people want grounds well kept or elderly preserved while slowly decaying. But they do. And 'the market' doesn't value man-hours equally, it values spending power, so even if Jose would enjoy watching TV more than Mike wants his bushes trimmed, Mike has money and Jose needs money.
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