The shortage isn't here yet, though for once I will not be in the slightest bit surprised if it does indeed arrive.
In the last few years carriers have tried short term measures such as increasing retirement age etc. These things can only ever give a very, very limited amount of benefit until you get bitten on the bottom.
I know for a fact the need of a few large UK airlines and a couple of very large European carriers. (Obviously I'm not going to go into detail here, but I am in a position to know about these things.) They are all gearing up for large recruitment drives as we speak. A couple of these are companies that haven't taken anyone on for 4-5 years and have even frozen the pay of their entire workforces and yet here we are with them going "uh oh, not enough crews" time to dust off the recruitment books.
This is happening now in what has ben described as the worst economic crisis for 70ish years. Give it another couple of years on the upturn away from economic meltdown and things will be changing rapidly indeed.
I have no idea about the veracity of a need for 466,000 pilots, but I do know that there have been very few trained in the last 5 years because recruitment has been limited (apart from RYR) and the availability of cheap money for training has all but dried up. This has put people off and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
I do not suggest that people spank £100K or do anything stupid like apply to CTC for a walletectomy on the basis of a Boeing forecast (or for any other reason for that matter), but I am convinced that the pilot job market is a whole heap rosier than it was a year ago and that it will only get better and better.
Lack of investment in any business ALWAYS comes home to roost and the lack of investment by airlines in pilot training will eventually come back to haunt. Not yet, but it will happen.
PPRUNE is always full of doom and gloom merchants and malcontents, often they have a point. In this case though, I'm not sure they do.