Oooor, even simpler... Tech hiring is down 40%... C'mon, guys... Ockham's razor. Hell, a couple of friends of mine were laid off, and are having a hard time finding employment...
A 40% decline in real tech-hiring rates would be a shocking, sudden decline. The simpler, most consistent, and most likely explanation is that the author's data isn't representative of the big picture.
It's very similar to "my helloworld.c won't compile, the compiler must be broken"
Edit: if the author has only been in the business a couple of years, he may not be aware of the historical boom/bust nature of it - yet.