My father was a Director at <large telecom company> and then an executive at another.
He's spent his entire career in the industry.
It's coming up on almost a year unemployed for him, and at this point he's resigned himself to the idea he'll probably have to re-train and do something else.
Take that for what you will.
I've spoken with many colleagues, a record number of which now are unemployed, some of whom are now at two years of unemployment (and each one of them have a decade or more of experience in their profession (Network/System Engineers/Operations/Principal Engineers, etc).
The unfortunate part is the numbers don't point out any alternative sector that needs people. Worse, re-training is done at your cost, and age-ism is a very big thing everywhere.
Most vocational programs have also been gutted, and the only program that survived requires you to be under 25.
The interference of AI companies, and other bad actors in the hiring process has also made it near impossible to find jobs (when they are actually available).
Many of the job postings require that submission for a position is contingent upon agreeing to borderline unlawful terms from a third-party company (to sign up for an account). Where they consider the candidates information proprietary information owned by the company, which cannot be shared; even though parts of the vetting process involve sharing sufficient information to identify the candidate...
Its all very stupid when you make it impossible and prohibit people from taking working. Historically, nothing good ever comes of preventing people from working.
1776 largely was driven by corruption and because there simply was too many mouths, and too little work.
The ignorant socialists among us took over the bureacracies, pushing a cult of qualification, and made it seem like subscribing would promote prosperity through cheap debt. They made it a real thing.
Rather than simply looking for baseline requirements to fulfill a role, positions always want a ballerina with contradictory requirements they themselves can't determine is most important.
I remember a position asking for 15 years experience in a language, that only existed for 10, and they refused to hire the creator of that programming language.
They also have loans fueling them with near free money so they can wait and suppress wages to a point of debt-slavery.
Its been quite a trip seeing all the things my grandparents (silent generation) were adamant and warned about coming to fruition within my lifetime.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a violent civil war starts in the next few years given the social contract has largely been broken by the generation currently in power, and they burnt all the bridges in doing so. There's going to be one hell of a massive correction in our lifetimes. For good or ill its coming.
Be prepared.