What happened to the job market

You are facing a few issues. 1) The job market is very weak, companies are only actually hiring if they need to. Furthermore, you're by far not the only IT professional caught in a wave of layoffs. Your competition is steep and applicant pools are over-crowded. So much so that many applicants are getting desperate enough, they are taking lesser positions at lesser pay than they should. For the very same reason you're talking about doing helpdesk come winter if you can't find something better, sooner. 2) AI applicant tracking systems (ATS) are absolute garbage. In most cases your resume/application isn't even hitting the recruiter's desk because something in there is tossing you out before you even have a shot. The ones you are getting in front of (see reason number 1, above), to make it to the screen call, something very particular about your application needs to be specific to what they think they want. 3) The one you finally got to talk to, that was a weed-out screening call. They had 10+ other applicants they were screening as well. They had to narrow the pool for interviews to 3-5. Any number of things contributed to your being dropped, probably nothing you said or did, but more what you didn't. There are a number of reasons, and you will never know, because they won't tell you. Recruiters are naturally lazy, and AI has made that worse. Head hunters don't work for you, they work for the client so they only put you in front of someone when you are a best fit. You need to adjust your resume and cover letter to the position before you apply, and run it through some AI application checkers to make sure you have the best possible chance of making it through an ATS AI agent. Be diligent, follow up with your applications whenever possible, if it's a LinkedIn source, PM then, if you have any way to get contact information on the recruiter, use it, get yourself in front of them, even if the AI won't, they can pull it from the ATS if they like you. Make the recruiter your advocate, they have pull over the hiring manager. Contact everyone you know who might know someone that might need someone like you, you have to work for this, and it will be exhausting and feel futile. Eventually something will pop. And good luck, you in your search, I hope you get yourself back in the game where and how you want to be.