I think people just latch onto ideas that try to simplify and make sense of frustrating situations where they dont have control. "Ghost jobs" are thing to blame now, for a while is was that taxcode thing for software engineers.

Well, no one else is making sense of it (or rather, the real answer is something we can't say), so people will do their own data gatherings and report their findings.

The only issue is that it's never one factor. Rising interest rates, s174, ghost jobs, outsourcing: them and many more factors all add up.