I started in the early 90s and nobody would look at you if you had less than 1500 and 500 multi. It took me 3 years of building time after getting my CPL-ME before I could land my first job flying cargo in small planes and 10 years to get to a Jet. There was way more supply of unemployed pilots (thousends for every job available) but the salaries at the Majors or any other company did not go down because of that. Everything started going bad after 9/11.