The problem is that for an average Joe on the street programming often equates to rocket science. I'm not trying to downplay the industry and say that the dev jobs are easy, but unless someone tries to really look into it, understand what it actually entails, they would think that it's extremely super complicated and is beyond their capabilities. In the past,I did offer quite a few colleagues a chance to learn with full support and very likely a job at the end with a substantial pay rise. Nobody ever took it.