Sometimes Econ101 supply and demand theory isn't nuanced enough. Wages can go up at the same time as the supply increases if the amount of money in the system also increases. How do you think software engineer wages rocketed up over the past 20 years?

Apples and oranges. One assumes there is a relatively fixed supply of plumbing problems. Software in the last 30+ years has created new industries which require more software people.

> One assumes there is a relatively fixed supply of plumbing problems.

The volume of plumbing problems is going to increase at least linearly with the housing supply, which (theoretically) increases more-or-less linearly with population. Plus, people move around, so there will be concentrations of problems, and those concentrations will move with the population.

That doesn't account for how technology and building codes and material changes have made previously simple plumbing problems more complex over time.

On the other hand we now have waterless urinals. Maybe plumbing tech and equipment costs have eliminated some jobs and made some jobs less skilled as it cheaper just to replace than do repairs that take knowledge.

Software jobs are many X what they were 30 years ago, while I doubt plumbing jobs have change that much above what they were relative to the population 30 years ago.

House sizes have doubled over the last 50 years. I would not assume a fixed supply of plumbing problems.

Outside of FAANG outliers and SV, have software engineer wages really rocketed up? I've worked outside the FAANG world at companies of various sizes and industries for 25 years and haven't seen it. If anything, I'd say wage growth has been kept artificially low by H1B competition from folks born in low cost of living countries under threat of deportation if they object to the abuse they receive. The average corporate IT dept. looks more like a sweatshop now than it did 20 years ago, the ones I've seen anyway.

I'm in Philadelphia, software jobs around here pay about 2-3 times what other engineering disciplines pay for the same level of experience.

How quickly do you hit the salary ceiling though? That's what I've seen. Software devs make a lot more than other engineers when starting out. By 7-10 years of experience, the gap is much, much narrower.

You could just do what happens everywhere else, price fixing. (I mean everywhere else as in the real world, not the soft interior of an “economics” textbook).