  1) until the fed lowers interest rates (and thus makes it easier for small to mid size companies to bring on more employees), hriing will be nowhere near the peak of 2022? where employees had all of the leverage
  2) trump tarrif's are probably limiting the ability of the fed to do serious interest rate cuts needed to spur hiring
  3) on top of this, AI is imo undoubtedly reducing demand in tech hires (esp. software engineers, but soon most white collar fields imo), something that wasn't the case just a couple of years ago.
  4) the latest US revision just showed a downward revision of 1 million less employed than previously posted over the last year or so, last month(?) was revised to job losses and the msot recent job month was basically flat as well.
  5) an arguement can be made that RTO, while crappy, greatly benefits cities by forcing a lot of highly paid tech workers to commute downtown, helping restaurant workers, cleaners (sorry the proper term escapes me at the moment), and other workers in support roles for offices keep their jobs (the spike in SF homeless during covid was caused by a big spike in high earning tech workers  suddently working remotely causing layoff in these office reliant industries).

In summary, employee leverage is really non existent in this climate, and you should think long and hard about quitting out of emotion. If you want long term freedom, your only hope is to take a big risk and start something on your own, with the added risk of now knowing that the job you left might not be there should you fail either because of AI or company layoffs/hiring freezes (greatly increasing your risk vs normal times). I've been long term unemployed in the past and I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemies in terms of how much stress can impact your life, and how it can easily wreck your sense of self-worth and self-confidence (luckily have been doing relatively great in the past few years).