I have been in the software engineering industry for 21 years. This whole "shortage of qualified programmers and engineers" thing is laughable. This cyclical line of BS has been going on since 1989-90. It repeats about every 7-10 years. First, there was this massive "shortage" of programmers and engineers in 1989, so we needed to con Congress into getting new increases in H1-B quotas so we could be "competitive". Funny, thing less than 1 year later all of a sudden there is a recession in 1990-1991 and a bunch of U.S. programmers and engineers are being laid off. Some shortage. Strange that the H1-B quota was never lowered back down at the point there was an obvious surplus of engineers/programmers.
Then came the days of quiet unpaid overtime (1992-1994) - the unspoken expectation that a programmer/engineer should be happy to still have a job and should put up with whatever BS such as endless 70-80 hour workweeks with no overtime that management could think up. Once the economy came back by 1995 or so, the experienced programmers/engineers started to wise up and negotiated better deals, became contractors or left their present company for greener pastures at other companies that would pay a competitive wage.
The next time you heard this crud was right around 1998-9 - remember we have a "shortage" of qualified programmers to deal with Y2K, etc. so please raise the H1-B quotas, allow more foreign students into colleges, etc. Well, then comes 2000-2001 the massive implosion of high tech jobs in the dot-com bubble burst, the telecomm depression, etc. Massive layoffs everywhere. Employers were happy because suddenly there is this large pool of skilled desperate engineers willing to work for 60-70% of their pay just 2-3 years before.
Contracting died off around this time (2001) because there was such a large pool of available labor that there was no point paying high dollars for contractors when you could lock in an employee at below-normal wages. It took probably 4-5 years or more just to get to the point of respectable wages - in some areas it has not recovered yet. Funny thing, during this time a lot of young people in the U.S. looked at what happened to the "skilled engineers" and wisely chose not to bust their ass getting a Comp Sci/Engineering BS/MS degree only to be employed at average or so wages, and be subject to the uncertainties of an outsource-happy corporate environment during the next recession, and work massive overtime for nothing. Instead, they chose to go into health-care, because that was where the "shortage" was.
Now here we are hearing the same BS again in 2006-2007. Whenever you hear this "shortage" line being talked up, it is really just a way of saying corporations are finding that they can't underpay and still get the qualified workers that they need, be able to get free overtime out of them, etc because people can still negotiate a better deal somewhere else, so we need to increase the supply at the low end ( H1-B VISA, new college grads, etc ) and create another surplus.
These are the same idiots that can't differentiate between person A who has true software engineering skills (architect, write a detailed design, optimize a system for real-time requirements, implement, handle multi-threading in all of its phases including debugging complex situations, enhance existing systems, understands event-driven systems, understands assembly language, etc ) and person B (fresh out of school, or in one of these outsourcing firms in India) who is coherent in the latest buzzword bingo of Internet stuff, database languages, XML, Java, etc. but couldn't debug their way out of a paper bag without help. These "B-type" people are competent usually only within an existing structure - more like template implementors at best. But you can't blame them - who would try to become A when you are only being paid for B?
But it's a situation where you get what you pay for. If you want to pay $50-60K, you are going to get a junior level person, or some kind of mediocre at best engineer who has outdated skills, or maybe a person who is lying on their resume' or a person who has been fired from other companies for personality issues, or somebody that only wants to work 40 hours a week ever and do the bare minimum, etc. The people that are really experienced quality engineers are going for maybe $90-120K or more and are not going to even look at those jobs. Maybe if they were desperate due to some personal situation, they might take $75-$90K, but not $50-60K.
But, hey remember all of that BS during the last 5-7 years about the productivity expansion, and how it was really great that corporate America was getting so much more productive - well the benefits of it never really reached the engineers - it was just pocketed at the top as always ( remember "Trickle Down" theory....lol ), while the companies just laid off experienced people, outsourced jobs to India and elsewhere at a frantic pace, and took huge ridiculous stock option grants for themselves, while at the same time using accounting rules (Sarbanes-Oxley) as an excuse to stiff most of the mid-level and low-level engineers on options grants and equity participation.
Strange how all the young people don't want to become engineers anymore. Can't say I blame them. I probably would not go into this field if I were 18 again now.