SKW has continued to grow through all of that. SKW pay, QOL, and culture are decent, definitely near the top but probably not at the top in all categories. Pay is probably the best, there are a lot of soft-pays and bonuses, after five years you can count on about hourly rate x 1300 for annual pay.

Also SKW as an independent has some advantages, owns some gates, owns lots of airplanes, and is so big that UAL and probably DL could not live without them right now (would take years to transition to another solution). Nobody, including mainline, could acquire hundreds of 70-seat RJ's to replace SKW because they don't exist! Any of the big-three which were to fire SKW would see their RJ's flying for other majors as quick as they could get through ROW. The big-three are generally OK with that because SKW has proven to be a fairly reliable partner with good economy of scale over the long-term. Right now is not a good time to take a chance on a bottom feeder to save a few pennies...customer service is where it's at when the economy is humming along, not penny-pinching.

All that said...there is serious risk that the entire regional model will be in jeopardy in a few years if they run out of FO's. If the legacies start hiring CFIs (or even 1000 hour RJ FO's on a wholesale basis), it will be game-over for the regional industry as we know it today. Even in that case you probably have a job at SKW, but it might be as an FO-for-life. Silver lining, there's a good chance that in order to retain FO's, they would just pay everybody CA rates after five years, regardless of which seat your seniority holds.

My recommendation would be to go to a major, but that will probably become self-evident in 3-5 years.