As a worker in High tech, it seems to me what I see is the companies have plenty of young men with the degrees required to hire, but they can get H1B visas cheaper.
Further if you hire a young chap, after 2 to 3 years of hard work he wants to earn a decent income, say enough to pay off his school debts and get married, that sort of thing. Well the issue with that is he might jump jobs if you do not give him a raise, whereas the H1B via guy will not for at least 5 years.
One thing I have noted in the last 20 yeas is productivity has gone up rather quickly, so you need fewer folks. The ones that remain are well paid, but no new ones are hired unless someone retires. Hard for Young guys to get in or advance under those circumstances.
In the non-degreed positions, what I see is companies want to hire contract labor or labor without benefits through a sourcing company. These companies supply skilled labor by sourcing older tech guys for low wages with no benefits, but that is all the 55 year olds can get. Most of the Engineers I work with do not advocate their sons following them, though in my generation we almost all followed our fathers footsteps in the technical fields.
It really does come down a miss-match between wages and skill set. A person with a skill expects to make enough to have a decent life. In my area they want to hire line techs in the cable industry for under 15 an hour. Skilled labor, 2 year degree, dangerous, out in all sorts of crappy weather and they want to pay a wage insufficient for a single guy who does not room share or depend on family for housing to live.
I am also in high tech and I agree with your post.
What we have going on in this country is disconnect between Business and Political leaders and the best interest of the majority of people.
They never face the consequences of their decisions, the pain is paid by other people while they reap the benefits.
In short they are strip mining the country for their own beneft.
Some how we need to bring the incentives back in alignment.
This election should be a wakeup call for them. But so far all I see is more of the same manipulation.