After the mass RIF madness of recent years where experienced IT pros were replaced en masse by offshore newbie contractors fresh out of school, the reason that stated unemployement rate is so low is because so many former IT pros have given up on their IT careers completely and switched to other kinds of careers for their daily bread. I know many former IT folks now self-employed (after being laid off) with small businesses doing eco-tourism, catering, baking, pet-sitting, truck driving, personal concierge-style project management, boutique musical instrument manufacturing, rental property management, etc. They're willing to try almost ANYTHING to avoid IT where in recent years they were misunderstood, mistreated, disrespected, and considered to be easily replaceable cogs in organizations that no longer gave even lip service to rewarding loyalty. Early in their careers, corporate IT was a good gig and practitioners were respected and valued even when not understood. Now, they're so disillusioned that even their kids in college are refusing to consider careers as engineers.

Some of the unemployed / RIFfed / outsourced IT folks still looking to get back into IT are being offered so little, they're staying with their intended-to-be-temporary jobs selling lamps or waiting tables or whatever. Of course, these under-employed folks don't count as unemployed.

Meanwhile... Many of the managers responsible for the dramatic declines in software quality and speed of problem resolution don't even realize what they've done because they're managing to the wrong metrics. All they see is the (less dramatic than anticipated) short-term savings on human resources expense (resources, NOT capital). They're also mistaking run-off customers for victims-in-general of the Great Recession... instead of recognizing the fact that their customers are fleeing due to poor quality and poor service.

Finally, there is a lot of unofficial age discrimination in IT hiring and firing. The population of RIFfees is decidedly skewed towards the older, more experienced (and therefore presumably more expensive) fraction of the IT worker population, due to the fact that many big RIFs were actually mass exercises in age discrimination legally covered by the thinly disguised fiction that the jobs were "eliminated" (only to be replaced by otherwise identical contract positions). FWIW, that's the same legal fiction that covers far too many H1B visas (which can be issued only after the sponsors swear that the "can't be filled locally" positions are not the same positions formerlly held by their recenty laid off FTEs).