Local companies seemly are willing to hire but because the flood of fired workers they are offering really bad wages. I got offered work as embedded C dev for 300 USD month... I didn't accept back then because I was still working in my old job. I regret not taking that job now. 300 USD at least is more than 0 USD.
I'm in Australia and don't expect big ticket US paychecks myself, but that does seem low for embedded C dev work - there's some skill required there.
I guess it's all relative to whatever economy you're embedded in though.
Good luck and best wishes going forward.
In Canada their end of year report listed some cities with median salaries of 100-130K USD, but I think most Canadian devs aren't on levels, and earning a bit less.
For example, the Canadian government pretty much pays software engineers between 40K-80K USD (even for 20 YoE). They're surely a massive employer, but they're not listed on Levels
Not that working for big tech or U.S. companies is that much more desireable, but it does pay a lot more, and those people are more likely to be reporting on Levels