I still write applications where I don't need modern frameworks like Vue/React at all.
jQuery is not an alternative to React or Vue. It's an alternative to vanilla JS.
When you're writing something that doesn't obviously need everything a reactive app framework like React offers the question you need to be asking isn't "Do I need React or do I only need jQuery?", it's simply "Do I need jQuery?". These days, unless you need to support very old browsers, most of the time the jQuery code isn't that much simpler than writing plain old JS.