Low salaries are not necessarily all a matter of supply and demand of pilots. A lot of it has to do with the way salaries are negotiated at their respective airlines. One aspect of union bargaining is that every pilot gets a equal and balanced share of salary increases and even decreases during tough times. Mathematically, this results in large disparities in compensation over time. To top it off, airline cost controlling(creating regionals, cutting pay, work rules, etc.) has focused on reducing the bloated salaries at the top resulting in pitiful salaries at the bottom. For current first year FO's to earn a livable salary, say $50K a year, all pilots at that company would have to receive a 100% increase in pay or more.