Saying it's a pay issue could also imply it's a macro issue, meaning that if salaries went up higher, the field would be more attractive and would attract more

Saying it's a pay issue could also imply it's a macro issue, meaning that if salaries went up higher, the field would be more attractive and would attract more talent from other better compensated fields (i.e. medicine, big law), creating more hireable engineers in the long term.