It's not the Bush or Obama Economy, it is the Corporate Greed Economy. Where the rules are:
More with Less -> More work load, Less staff
Cut Headcount til it hurts...see more with less
Reduce Expenses til it hurts
Today's companies haven't not only just shaved all the fat, they have taken some meat with it.
They will keep slicing until there is nothing left and all of the money is in the Executives Pockets.
I spent much of my career trying to be an efficiency expert. I'd either work myself out of a job or get a job finding ways to do more with less. Consider how my own work-ethic and self-esteem played against jobs that were too easy, or perceptions of over-staffing in my office. You'd be surprised at the forces brought to bear to bring someone down who tries to streamline things, or how such forces may otherwise be locked together in antagonism, but find the serious manager or efficiency expert a common enemy.
Nobody wants "make work" jobs, except in desperation. Even meeting basic needs to put food on the table, Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs is still effective -- just unrealized. So there are demographic and political imperatives. Larger supply of labor means more unemployed and more pressure for more jobs. But even "pure competition" and the replacement of "profitability" with "survivability" doesn't assure full employment. This will be the challenge of the future, with growing world population, changing markets and market demand.
What you say is true, but it is no less true than to consider which President represented which interests, or which one was making a more deliberate effort to deal with the reality.
I'd rather live in a mixed economy and a managed economy -- market socialism -- wherein concentrated industries and plutocrats are limited by government power as to how they can be "Masters of the Universe" in their laissez-faire ambitions.
As for Dagney Taggert -- Rand's heroine in "Atlas Shrugged." A pure fiction, but if you see the character as a view or proxy for Rand the narcissist, Rand the elitist, Rand the delusional and Rand the speed-freak -- then Taggert is no heroine and appears for what she is. Carly Fiorina on steroids.