I'm not an agent myself, but I did help start a brokerage and spend most of my time automating busywork for our agents. Our top agents do 5-15 transactions per month in very competitive markets, have competitive acceptance and close rates, and great NPS scores. Agents are absolutely necessary to negotiate with sellers and talk stressed out buyers through the process, but most spend the majority of their time doing lead generation. I talked to an agent from a respectable brokerage in LA the other day who said she spends 95% of her time prospecting for new clients.

I'm not by any means saying agents are lazy, I maybe phrased that poorly. Just that if you're looking at the hourly rate the agent is making for the ~10 hours they're spending from offer to close, it's kind of wacky compared to most other types of high skill work (e.g. 10 hours on a 500k home with the typical 2.5% commission is $1,250/hour).