After the .com bubble, the jobs got outsourced to India.
If you weren't in the job market to catch the y2k bug, you were cutting your teeth in a down market. Some programmers slogged it out making crap wages, (esp. Web Developers) many programmers never got a gig and jumped into IT, only to see massive outsourcing to Brazil, many got burnt out and jumped to a different field. Eventually some programmers got on the new wave of mobile app development.
When the daily innovation slows in the app sphere, I expect we'll see similar. For now, there's a big market in making "custom apps" for various companies, but they're little more than glorified websites optimized for mobile devices. As mobile devices grow in capabilities and apps grow in complexity, companies will merge, the size of development teams will grow, PHBs will take the fun out of programming, then they'll start "saving money" by sending jobs to whatever country is paying the least.
That said, nothing is forever, and there is always a good job for the best developers. Always.