If you're a webdev, you need to know asynchronous programming. It's not a hard concept or anything, I don't know where you read that. And it is a must know in webdev. No way around that. Besides, you can't compare NodeJS to Laravel or Django. NodeJS is a JavaScript runtime, whilst Laravel and Django are Frameworks.

I'd use Laravel, I like the framework and it's pretty easy to use.

I have been a Django developer for more than three years. My gripes with Django are that it's becoming more monolithic. For instance, I cannot swap out the requests layer for another package. The same with session management. For this reason I've started looking at alternative, more micro, frameworks like Flask and Pylons. Though there are way fewer "batteries included" these do allow me to swap components as I see fit. Flask is very nice for those projects where you just need to get something out the door quickly but still need to future-proof the app.

Prior to Django, I was a Drupal and ZF developer (both of which I loathe anymore).

Just recently I've started playing around with Laravel. My impression so far is that Laravel is more like Flask than Django. Because of this I cannot give an apples to apples comparison. However, I can say that I like the direction Laravel is going: package management via composer (pip for PHP :) ), swappable components, etc. The framework is well documented and the nomenclature is consistent for the most part. It's PHP which gives you the near-ability to deploy anywhere making the logistics easier.

I doubt that I'll leave Django any time soon because I have too much knowledge around it at this point, but I will definitely continue experimenting and playing with Laravel.