The amount of junk emails I'm getting from both QR and EK asking me to apply because I'd shown some interest in the dim and distant passed but had since said I was not interested seems to be just one sign of the carriers finding it harder and harder to recruit.
Each time I visit Dubai friends seem to be more and more demoralised and bitter about it. Last visit included one friend who had just got his 777 command a month earlier but was already fed up by it and just waiting to have the experience (and presumably 7 years) to leave.