In Australia, as mentioned the majority of the assistants are gone, but in their place we have controllers entering pop-up flights into the system, and rerouting a/c following change of flight plans enroute, previously duties flung to the assistants. Similarly Australia used to have Flight Service Officers handling a/c OCTA but now ATCO's handle those, so if anything there are more controllers in Australia since the change to an advanced stripless system.
In many years we may evolve into something like an airbus pilot where we sit and watch the a/c do 90% of the tasks and just be there in case it all goes wrong
