I'd say the global recession has an awful lot to do with it.

Economic recession = less demand for air travel, both domestically and internationally. Airlines reduce capacity to match the decreased demand, resulting in fewer flights (meaning fewer required pilots) but high load factors on the flights that do operate.

Not to sound condescending, because I know you know all that.

If there had been no recession, its probably safe to say US legacies would have handled the decreased attrition due to increased retirement age without a need to RIF, FedEx would not have experienced reduced line guarantees, UPS would not have furloughed despite making 9-figure quarter profits (as opposed to 10 figure quarterly profits), and a huge number of business aviation jobs would still exist.