I read the section over again, and could almost convince myself that it's not about jobs-as-life-purpose. I was thinking that it could be suggesting that people get depressed and die when they lose their jobs because of financial fears and insecurity, instead. But the "We lose any sense of economic purpose" bit is what suggests it really is about life's meaning.
"Economic purpose" is a very specific kind of purpose, and I do not think that it's the same as life's purpose or meaning. I think the confusion here (and I suspect it's the result of the way I wrote it as much as anything, so I don't want to look like I'm sloughing off responsibility here), is that the section in question can be read too easily to conflate economic purpose (which protects oneself and one's family from precarity, among other things) and eudaimonia, which is what I would point to when thinking of meaning or "flourishing."
Appreciate the give and take here.