One of the problems here is that the author is using his/her experience at "conferences" and stories from former "big business" employees to judge the volume of available work.
Not only is that evidence anecdotal, but also comes from a very specific/narrow audience. I'm not going to say "conference goers" are inferior or bad at their jobs, just that there's a whole lot of web designers and developers who never attend conferences and therefore aren't included in his polling. There's also a lot of us (myself included) doing a lot of web design work for small businesses too small to hire in house. Even when our clients hire someone in-house to handle the web, it results in more work for us.
Not only is that evidence anecdotal, but also comes from a very specific/narrow audience. I'm not going to say "conference goers" are inferior or bad at their jobs, just that there's a whole lot of web designers and developers who never attend conferences and therefore aren't included in his polling. There's also a lot of us (myself included) doing a lot of web design work for small businesses too small to hire in house. Even when our clients hire someone in-house to handle the web, it results in more work for us.