Online ad agencies are again facing an impossibly tight labor market, this time made worse by the dot-com bubble bursting having forced many then-junior executives out of the industry. Those executives, had some typically small proportion of them remained in the agency business, would now be mid-level managers, precisely the group agencies find they lack, according to ClickZ. One hiring consultant said that efforts to reach these former online advertising agency workers haven't proved very fruitful, as they've moved on to completely different careers. Agencies now face the same difficult decisions they did in 1998, when they had to choose between slowing expansion, over-promoting inexperienced hires or simply staffing accounts with throngs of junior people. So far it doesn't appear as though the salary inflation experienced during the initial internet boom is reappearing.