Two views on employment but one common theme

CNN-Money has an article titled “This Time’s Different” about how the job market should have improved by now, but hasn’t, and lists a number of possible reasons why.

Growth in productivity is making it so that companies simply aren’t going to need to hire until the economy has been growing at a strong clip for some time. Thanks in part to improved technologies, companies have found that they are able to do more with less.

And here’s MSN-Money’s article “7 Reasons the Job Market is About to Take Off”:

Economists love productivity, which is how living standards improve and why we Americans enjoy the world’s highest standard of living. As companies become more productive, the same workforce can be used to produce more goods.

The MSN-Money article is (obviously) more optimistic on job creation and makes a political prediction:

This politics-as-usual approach [by the Democrats] will backfire very badly, in my judgment. I anticipate that the economy, a negative for the administration right now, will be a significant positive for the president’s re-election hopes by this time next year. Those Democrats, who don’t seem able to look very far ahead, will end up being hoisted by their own petard.

Of course, I very much hope that the economy continues to improve and that jobs come roaring back. Does the Democratic Party feel the same way? Somehow I suspect not.