I've been bouncing an idea around in my head related to this for a little while now. While I don't think it's as specific as 'no engineers qualified to fill 50k/year job' I have a feeling that in general it is lack of computer skills that is keeping these people unemployed.

There is a huge amount of the population - in America at least - who cannot handle the most basic of tasks on their computers without assistance or a large waste of time. Not that I'm blaming them, as they got along just fine (though less efficiently than their more computer literate co-workers) before the downturn, but now that they have been laid off and are looking for new jobs, the employers willing to hire people who don't have the basics down are few and far between.