Hahaha. Downvote me all you like but experience agrees with my statement. There must be enough programmers or at least a sufficient so that employers looking can skim off the cream.
What they are all looking for are savant developers who can code a new linux in a day, who will do that for a pittance, who are willing to work 100 hours per week, who want to work at some bullshit web startup which hopes to be just disruptive enough that they get bought out. Any lesser people are outright ignored.
This requires stuffing hordes of people though education/training in the hope that just a few gems will be created.