To put a finer point on this that others may miss - when interest rates are low as they had been from 2009-2021 “money is cheap.” When money is cheap, companies can spend more of it on growth and when companies are in growth mode they spend more on staffing, and especially dev teams.

So, naturally during that time period the job market was very hot and job hoping was easy. Now that interest rates are higher, money isn’t as cheap, which means companies can’t afford to spend as much on growth, which means that the job market is much cooler.

To elaborate on this, higher interest rates mean that money in the future is less valuable than money today, which means that investments in software etc have a higher bar to pass to be worthwhile doing.