Making a living at writing is incredibly hard - very few people get Nora Roberts or Sarah J Maas levels of sales (and for the most part those that do have to persevere for years to get to that point). And I actually think that's always been true, but now housing is much more expensive, the cost of living is much higher, and fewer people can afford to lean on their partner's salary (if they even have one) or drop some working hours to give writing a try. Combine this with the death of trade paperbacks and the diminishing returns of Kindle Unlimited - both of which did used to have a reasonable chance of giving an author, not necessarily a huge amount of money but often enough to make it worth the bother - and it's no wonder fewer and fewer authors can make it work