> How many of them are overqualified for what they're doing and would jump if the market were paying more or if there were better opportunities? You can't say m

> How many of them are overqualified for what they're doing and would jump if the market were paying more or if there were better opportunities? You can't say much about whether it's an employer's or employee's market merely by citing unemployment %. A lot of them are overqualified. But they are handsomely compensated. They could do less boring work, but there's less of a market for it. > Any discussion about a shortage or surplus of jobs/talent is meaningless without specifying compensation. Many companies would gladly take 100K great engineers at a salary of $20K/year. What if the going rate were $1M/year? Would there still be a shortage of engineers? When the bid and ask are far apart, both sides will complain about how hard it is to make a deal. I made that statement under the assumption of current market rates. Whatever google/facebook/uber/apple/microsoft are paying. Quit pretending that they wouldn't hire more engineers if there was supply. They clearly are willing to. Sure there's some hyperbole to it. But the entire valley + amazon/microsoft could easily absorb another 100k engineers without that event drawing down salaries significantly.