This might be a purely semantic argument, but I'd say in the example you provided, you have a skill shortage, not a talent shortage. If you provided training, I'm sure you could find enough brain-surgeons willing to train to be rocket scientists. Of course, that would require you to pay for their training and allow for months of lower productivity while they come up to speed, but that's still a better situation than 3.7 million openings and 0 unemployed.
The problem isn't filling the rocket scientist shortage with brain surgeon retrains. It's finding the unemployed shelf stacker who's really just 6 months of good training from being you rocket scientist. Otherwise you're just creating a shortage of brain surgeons.
It's VERY hard to find quality developers. I agree with the article that HR is a huge problem, but I'm a hiring manager and I still don't see a great deal of quality.
While it's not as extreme as shifting industry, I recently took the advice from a few HN threads I'd spoken up on and while I'm looking for a PHP developer, I didn't insist that PHP be one of the languages you already know.
Did that work? No. I still didn't get an influx of quality applicants.
I also said in the ad that I was more interested in a cover letter than a resume that shows where you've worked or gone to school, and I'm interested in your Stack Overflow or HN profile. In other words: I'd love to hire a hobbyist.
But none of the 5% of this country's unemployed applied.
