Fact of the matter is that many todays regional pilots would never get hired at a major carrier regardless if they parked RJ's in a one for one swap of slightly larger narrow body aircraft. And regardless of hours.
The prevailing thought seems to be if you cant initially get a job at a major it has to do with your hours and in some cases that might be true ( course we arnt talking about 400tt newhire FO regional pilots ) .... but many ( no i dont have a number ) regional pilots simply dont fit the mold that the mainline carriers are looking for. Is that a nice thing to say..nope...is it true... yep. Case in point... not sure about the recent newhire classes at DAL, but there was a time in the not so distant past that if everything else being equal you were a military guy..getting on a DAL was much easier than if you werent....was that right? Dunno...but it was the culture.
Fact of the matter is that Many if not most of todays regional aircraft seem to be 50-70 seat jets when just 15 years ago nearly ALL regional aircraft were 20-40 seat turbo props. Reality is that passanger traffic is increasing and this was a was to bridge the gap UP for the regionals...and to cut costs for the majors. I dont see the regional jet as we know it today going away anytime soon ...better pay.. probably... better work rules probably... but I dont think you will see the mainline guys rushing out to add small narrowbody aircraft to their fleets.... hell LGA is already talking about moving the average size of aircraft a company must use UP......
the next 10 years should be very interesting....