Why does the media talk loudly about a shortage of qualified software engineers or web developers while Indeed Job Trends show a decline?

Id add to Richard's answer that what there is a shortage of is people who you can under-pay to do professional quality work. Which is basically what he said, in another form.  However there is no true shortage of very qualified people.  There are a lot of post age 40 superstars looking for work.

Lots of answers such as there is no shortage of qualified people.This is definitely not true, standards have declined over the years, as well as requirements.  So, we must dig a bit, is it possible that software companies are doing better at retaining software people?  http://www.infusivesolutions.com/blog/bid/87806/Stuck-Turnover-rates-remain-subpar-post-recessionSo by expanding the variables that we analyze from beyond just openings being posted, we get a picture that perhaps fewer people are risking a change of careers.This means the jobs on indeed may be fewer, but are they getting filled as easily?I am not sure where to get the stats, or if anyone has tried to gain these states.  Perhaps we can do some screen scrapes, but there are some issues, such as are openings pulled down after the position was filled.  We can look at the labor force statistics from the government or dig in many other areas, but the easiest way to evaluate the real demand is simple.Cost.  If pay rates increase above the inflation rate, the job is high in demand, if it increases lower than the inflation rate, it is low in demand.The average salaries for software developer, http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-Software-Engineer-l-United-States.htmlshows us a basic breakdown of demand.  As shown by the linked reference the salary index has grown from 1 to about 1.2. Historically most companies paid raises solely by a formula (and many still do) based on overall baselines across the company, such as cost of living increase plus a small rate.  As demand rose for software engineers, pay demands increased, but often companies did not want to pay the rates.  This is a leading cause of many software engineers jumping jobs every 2 years.  Recently many companies are rectifying this, especially larger software companies.  Realizing that retaining their programmers is key to the prosperity, they are trending larger pay increases by demands of the type of position, or using internal promotions and segregation to other types of jobs or changing the responsibilities of some titles.It used to be odd to see more than one senior on the same team, now you may have a lead, 2-3 seniors, a mid level and a junior making up one team.  A lot of this is to help with retaining employees in a highly competitive industry, while not rocking the traditions of small cost of living raises.So, until the salary index drops, software developers are in high demand.  Good bad, and everything in between.  Cheap is not going to happen until the demand goes away.  Some parts of the world like the UK do not have this problem, and in fact it is difficult to find a job let alone a great paying one as a software engineer in London (especially without experience). 

You are looking at it wrong. Web development technology is exploding, and as a consequence, there is a shortage of developers who understand the latest technology. "Web Developer" is no longer sufficient to describe the needs of a job requirement. Try searching for node.js, full-stack, angular, responsive web design...and tell me demand for the newest skills isn't rising.