When we say shortage, what we generally mean is there are fewer people qualified for a position than the market demands.* And in that sense, yes, we have a shortage of engineers. There's a reason why it's so easy for CS majors to find jobs right now, and so hard for most recent college grads.
Well, I was just using engineers and fry cooks as a hypothetical example.
You brought up the example of a highly paid person getting laid off and therefore it wouldn't be beneficial to take a minimum wage job. My point is, generally, if a highly paid person is in a field where there is also a lack of qualified applicants, they will find a new job rather quickly.
But you cannot deny that in this current economy, there are a lot of "overqualified" people who are getting laid off and cannot find anything other than minimum wage jobs, so they stay unemployed (or go to grad school).
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