I also think the thousands of desperate pilots is slightly exagerated...
Look at the PPRuNe ab-initio holding pool we set up recently. I am sure that most of the qualified people with current licence and ratings are not in the list yet but I think a lot of them are as all serious jobseekers I know often visit pprune.
Just a thought - I know that the last info sessions for the SSTR's in Belgium ended up with almost zero interest.
Serious qualified jobseekers are becoming a minority and look at the guys and girls in the schools - if there are any they'll be finished in a year or two...and look at the latest adds in Flight International, hours going down from 1500 to 500 and now even 250 and to be honest I think that if there's noone around with 500 on type anymore, finding the guy with 250 on type won't be around either...