> there's a governmental report about how this country is missing 150k programmers

You shouldn't take these governmental reports at face value. In my country, we see a lot of these reports too, and for all kinds of professions. Most of the time it just means that the corporate want more people willing to work for less.

Well, yes. But if all the corporates only want to hire people at that price it’s still a shortage. It’s just a shortage of shrubs.

That's quite explicitly not a shortage in the economic sense.

We have this too in Germany, but it's usually not based on open positions but some "we would need this to grow the GDP further industry is saying they miss these number of people" from some lobbying group like Bitkom. But Chapeau! for your country.

Keep in mind that government reports have a time lag. It's based on someone doing research some time ago. The time lag could easily be months. If it was 100% true at the time of research, the current situation may be very different.

Meta was hiring aggressively at the beginning of the year, as were many other companies.

Which translates to: We can't find 150k programmers willing to work for the salary we are offering.

That salary is still 2x-5x the average.

The problem is this statistics contains jobs ads that are not viable:

If i put out a job ad: Need a software develioer with skills in COBOL, latest react and assembly, to lead a team of 10 for $30k

And I cant hire anyone

It will still end up in government statistics for shortage.

This is lile if we all put out ads on Gumtree/craiglist 'will buy a Toyota, brand new, for $1000", and someone counts thise ad and concludes there is a shortage of Toyotas.

I saw a lot of this in 2009 and 2010. Hilariously low offers. CEOs complaining they cannot find enough employees.

The offer may be appropriate for what the value that the developer is expected to bring to the organization.

Not all organizations get lots of value from developers.

It also means they're not losing a lot by not having a developer, so they're perfectly ok with having the position open until someone takes it.

If they are offering so little money that noone even applies for a position in a year, then clearly it is not a real job offer.

If I want to hire a top proffeshional for minimum wage, its not a job offer, its just wishfull thinking.

In that example, you still want a Toyota though, right? Just because you don't want one all that badly doesn't mean your life wouldn't be better with one.

Tough to say. Do I need a Toyota? no, but I'd happily buy one for $1K.

Demand elasticity makes any report on the volume of demand irrelevant unless it also covers the pricing of that demand.