Ask people in 2000 or 2008. Peaks and troughs, peaks and troughs with salaries going up over the long term.
And it's certainly possible that CS/programming/etc. largely remains a solid engineering/engineering-adjacent career but some of the geo- and large tech-specific compensation is mostly an anomaly.
Agreed, I’m not in a HCOL location and that’s my experience.
I will say the BLS growth trends for SE/CS/IT/tech degrees are not showing as strong of job growth as they were 10-15 years ago.