Yes Covid caused a lot of early retirements, heck I was one of them. But there are still a LOT more retirements happening for a long time. As you say the scramble might not be as frantic, but getting people to stay in a job is important for all airlines to be viable. And yes there are markets that can only support RJ sized planes, but I don't see the pay rates coming back down to what they were any time soon. If they're paying similar wages to fly an E175 to a 73 or A320, there is no reason to keep the flying separate from mainline. Of course that's just my opinion. If I could have said where this Industry would go over the last 30 years, my career choices for airline and bases ,moving across the country, would have been wildly different.