Number of certified SharePoint Developers increase by 500% in 12 months …
So demand slowly catches up with the market. Despite the credit crunch, and supposed "global economic recession", the SharePoint markets (and IT in general) continue to buck the trend.
This can be seen from this site: Number of Microsoft Certifed Professionals Worldwide.
There are now 2,360 MCTS WSS 3.0 Application Developers in the world. Last time I checked (about this time last year) there was less than 450! Not bad growth, I think.