[qkrthnu]

I doubt there is ANY employer demand for high-paid programmers.

The demand from an employer perspective is for highly-skilled programmers. If a proven highly-skilled programmer was willing to happily work for minimum wage employers would be lining up for miles to hire that person.

The highly-skilled workers are the ones demanding to be highly-paid.

If flipping burgers was more difficult then there would be a smaller supply of qualified workers, those workers could demand to be paid more, and the employers would have to pay up or risk getting crushed by their competition.