Thank you for this interesting insight. For sure, there are loads of non-rated applicants, as you rightly mentioned. Not many places even accept applications from newbies these days, so no wonder. But perhaps the number of those will be limited to however many courses have already been paid to the ATOs before corona and cannot be refunded now?
As for Captains - 600 people for maybe 150 vacancies isn't too competitive indeed. 4 applicants per one place is quite a normal ratio for major companies even in far better days. Possibly even less if many are applying purely as a backup.