Well, I suppose that after a decade or more of turning civil aviation into a awful career this was bound to happen. Airlines have successfully stripped pensions and frozen pilot wages for years.
In case you did not read the article in depth, most of what is happening to cause this shortage is due to more and more regulations. There will still be people who want to fly even if their salary is cheap, because that is their passion, just like there were writers and authors since the damn of civilization even when they could not make a living out of it. Salaries are not everything.
It's the Wall Street Journal, so of course they would say that regulations are the root cause.
To put it in WSJ-speak: The present situation is evidence that we have exhausted the marketplace of people willing to fly airplanes for poor pay, eroding benefits and lousy job security.
At this point, a regional jet pilot is making less than a Starbucks barista or Apple Store salesman. ( http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/06/16/pilot-pay-want-to... )