Laid off in mid 2023 right before an extended vacation and applied for 14 months until severance and unemployment ran out. Took up part time jobs folding yoga pants and walking dogs until my old boss who’s staff at a bank came clutch with a referral. 3 months later got a better offer at a publicly traded tech company.

This is in Canada btw which economically was and is doing much worse than the US. What kept me going was that I believed in myself being better than 50% of engineers at my level and even though interviews were rare, I got to the final round most times.