I don't think I made my argument clear. This isn't about companies not paying artists, it's about peer-to-peer opportunities contracting and the market shrinking at the bottom.

https://www.reddit.com/r/artistforhire/

This is hardly the only community for this, and it's evaporated into a ghost town. Prices have decreased an order of magnitude.

This is one of the ways up and coming artists without professional training get started earning money from their skill set.

You should see also how Fiverr has filled up with GenAI artists that are pricing out traditional artists. Fiverr isn't typically a place for highly skilled work - it's for newbies and developing world opportunities. And now the money is thinning out.