This would only be true if companies needed better employees than their competitors. If you merely need someone capable of doing a job, there's no such limitation: it's logically-possible for 100% of software developers to be able to put a script in cron that runs a SQL query to generate a report.
Given enough time almost any very junior software developer from any amount of training could successfully complete that task. What you consider capable is that they can do it within a certain time frame and with a certain level of quality. That quality being higher than others and the time frame being faster than others.
Also, that expectation of time frame and quality level has increased significantly since 1985. The reason that has increased is because the average level software developer in 2017 can do that task quite a bit faster and of higher quality than the average software developer could do in 1985.
The definition of acceptable in any market changes with the pool of options available.
