Then there is the higher interest rates, which in themselves are an issue for the economy. Not so much because companies “need” to borrow money as such, but because the ridiculously low interest rates made it easier to make more money since you could fund things with money you didn’t have, since it was basically free to do so. A lot of places even sort of dropped the ball on this, not locking in the rates on their loans because, well, because we’re collectively rather stupid, so many organisations are looking at making deals with banks to find some reasonable place to land these loans in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone too bad.
There is more to it than that, but the over all result is that a long with the inflation (which may have stopped but it’s not like prices are dropping just because they paused increasing) wage stagnation and so on, is that there is a lot less purchasing power and willingness both in the investment and in the consumer markets.
You can say that companies over hires during the COVID lock downs, which isn’t really wrong, but we’re also sort of in a recession that we have collective agree not to talk about. Partly because it’s a weird recession considering the job market is hot.