>Presumably the shortage of labor was still real, and if they needed to hire people, but couldn't poach, then they hired them from the rest of the talent pool. If that's the case, then removing the "cold calls" from the talent search might have had the effect of actually driving up salaries for those not working at these companies, since potentially reduced the supply.
I don't think the evidence supports this theory.
If the illegal agreements had artificially raised salaries then you would expect salaries to remain the same or even decrease after the DOJ stepped in.
Instead, according to the WSJ, Google gave a 10% pay increase to all of its employees six weeks after the hiring collusion ended.
"All those employees" including almost all of whom were (as a fraction of population) junior/mid engineers who were never covered by the anti-recruiting agreement.
I don't think the evidence supports this theory.
If the illegal agreements had artificially raised salaries then you would expect salaries to remain the same or even decrease after the DOJ stepped in.
Instead, according to the WSJ, Google gave a 10% pay increase to all of its employees six weeks after the hiring collusion ended.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/11/10/on-googles-10-percent-pa...