[eddd-ddde]

Then why hire front end devs for a project that doesn't need one?

Probably 80% of websites could do with a good designer that knows how to get their designs from concept to CSS and a good backend engineer that know how to output decent markup.

[stavros]

Because someone needs to turn the concept to browser-ready, responsive, cross-browser, lightweight markup, and that person is a developer who specializes in the frontend, ie a frontend developer.