Job market

High interest rates causing companies to be able to borrow less money and take less risks and do less projects to only focus on the profitable ones. Difficulty in borrowing money also means funding problems for startups. All this leads to low employee demand. Interest rates were increased due to high inflation which was caused by sudden issues in supply of energy, food etc due to russia sanctions and disruptions on trade routes due to wars and stuff. Since supply was decreasing, demand had to be brought down too! Apart from increasing interest rates, fed is also decreasing money supply (I don't understand how exactly cos I'm no economist). Once the wars and conflict end and money supply goes back down to an acceptable level, we can have a decent job market again! That probably does not look even remotely possible in the near future though.

During the pandemic, approximately from the Q2 2021 to Q3 of 2022 there was a huge demand for making everything digital asap. That along with people believing the metaverse will be the only future and people won't go back to normal ways of socialising that much; created a huge supply and demand imbalance for people. During those times due to low interest rates companies got debt and/or funding very easily. So it resulted in unrealistic salary hikes (for new joiners). Afterwards "metaverse will only be the way of life" bubble burst. The things which went digital require less people for maintenance (maintenance in IT needs less people than creating). And as BaatMaan mentioned the interest rates etc are increased. Hence due to the combination of these reasons, current market situation is like this.