Those other factors due exist for preventing raises to other employees. The claim, however, was that demand was _far_ exceeding supply. When that happens with any good people start hoarding the resource and going out of their way to maintain their existing supply. If there was truly that great a difference between the demand for software devs and the supply of them, we'd see companies doing their best to keep their employees, at least on average. Instead we're in a situation. Where companies are engaging in some sort of brinkmanship with their employees to see if they'll accept the lack of compensation increase, and they dont appear to care if they are loosing employees due to it.