When nobody wants to return to office, why not? The work from home shift was always going to accelerate the global pay equilibrium, it will continue to do so.
It's not about "global equilibrium", because that misses completely that hiring a very expensive westener still has positive roi, but only if you are attempting to innovate.
Projects are being cancelled left and right and teams dissolved, so this tells me that the former point is shakey. Something tells me that we'll have a tiny boom sometime after the AI bubble pops and suddenly innovation is "free" again. Or because smaller startups can actually get funded without needed to throw AI somewhere in their pitch deck.
I’m not so optimistic. But glad some people are!