I've been hiring engineers in the US for 20 years, both native and foreign. I can attest that juniors are indeed high maintenance and low skill. That isn't my point.

Yes, when you "need more engineers" it's always when you need someone with skills NOW. The way you bring up juniors is to give them peripheral tasks, things where they can learn the ropes, understand the process. My concern is these "junior tasks" are being filled with foreign workers, and this is why so many of the "high demand" senior engineers happen to be foreign. They were given the opportunity over native engineers. This is very very bad as a policy.

With %45 of the workforce being in STEM, and none of them can start a family and buy a home until they are too old to have children, we have a serious policy problem, and everyone can see it plain as day.