The exact opposite would happen. If there is a tech labour shortage, that is to say, too many jobs and not enough employees to meet those jobs, then we expect

The exact opposite would happen. If there is a tech labour shortage, that is to say, too many jobs and not enough employees to meet those jobs, then we expect the price of labour to rise until enough people are incentivized to work. Think the logic behind Uber surge pricing If there are too many jobs and not enough employees, then you would not at all expect people to be willing to work less than the going rate. Additionally, you would expect the price to rise first, as the most productive/profitable firms can pay a higher salary and still make money. You would expect the price to rise until a) Less profitable companies stop looking for labour because they won't make money on it; and b) enough extra people, motivated by riches, enter the job market. The fact that there seems to be chronically unfilled positions at every tech company I've ever seen, would predict that salaries should rise until they're filled. But they don't. We can make a few hypotheses about why this is. For funsies, here's some: 1) Government immigration caps. There is plenty of developer supply out there.... outside the borders. We aren't letting enough of them in 2) Greedy corporations. They simply don't want to raise salaries, because they're soulless MBABots. 3) Skills gap. As many people are pointing out in this thread: Most journalists' treatments of "Silicon Valley worker shortage" seems to be of the formula "There are X unfilled jobs at software companies. There are Y citizens in the United States with certifications A, B, and C. NOW KISS". And yet this is pretty simplistic. Perhaps there is an abundance of (say) people able to do grunt-level IT work, but skilled software architects are in short supply 4) The B Word. Maybe all of these startups and brand name tech companies are unprofitable, and only surviving on investor storytime. Maybe they legitimately can't afford to pay developers more. Maybe we're all going to be out of jobs in a year or two 5) Location gap: maybe there's plenty of talented engineers elsewhere, and they can't or won't relocate to California.