I'm surprised to read these recent anecdotes (going back to that New Jersey unemployment COVID programmer shortage) from various people that COBOL jobs are in high demand yet shockingly underpaid. That would seem to imply markets don't actually work the way we've been told.
The difference in this case is that the press is showing sympathy to those who won't pay the price and then complain about the missing supply. That doesn't happen in most markets.
Why is the press listening? Because the people complaining are people that the press normally listens to - banks and big, big businesses. It seems that many such businesses would rather complain, publicly, than pay a market-clearing rate. Well, I don't have a lot of sympathy, to be honest...
The other way of reading the situation is: There's nobody interested in working in COBOL at the suggested rates.