This.
I have been out of the tech startup labor market for many years. But when I was doing hiring in a startup around 2017, we had to put specific, conscious effort into accepting inexperienced candidates. The default mode for hiring is finding like-minded individuals whose experience overlaps with the existing team.
Using AI as a scapegoat for hiring freezes or layoffs is just more FUD. Like all propaganda campaigns, the purpose of fatigue is to induce an amnesia effect.
This has been my experience as well. I tried my hand at switching jobs in 2018 and it was a tough market. It feels like people don't have any concept of transferable skills, and just want a clone of someone who just left and can pick right up from where the other person left off, with no on-boarding period. Nothing seems to have really changed in the intervening 8 years.