All of my life I have heard that there is a shortage of engineers. But in my engineering career of 50 years I could never detect that there was a significant shortage. At times, companies had difficulty hiring a large number of engineers with the experience they wanted on short notice, but that was about the extent of it. They really liked to hire foreign engineers who worked for less when circumstances permited it. Here is an article about the supply of engineers (and scientists).

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/what-shortage-of-scientists-and-engineers/

I was an engineer because that was what I was interested in. I think that is true for most engineers and scientists. There are a lot of ways to make more money, like law or medicine, or even selling real estate.