Ana sorry about that. But yea you are not alone. My own speculation is the answer lies between too many fake/low quality freelancer accounts that's somehow ranking higher than everyone else and/or Upwork is changing its business model to "encourage" freelancers to buy connects and spend a lot of time to find jobs. Even when you search for jobs, you'll notice almost all of the job postings are now of much lower quality: low or $0 spend, payment not verified, pays $10/hr but in the job description it says $50 - $100, previous hires are mostly $5-10/hr freelancers, or $500 offer for a $2000 job... comon. The 1 or 2 decent jobs that's left has 50+ proposals. And it's been posted for a month. Last time the client viewed the job was a month ago. Gee, maybe the client didn't wanna deal with so many low quality freelancers, and even if a top quality freelancer is in there somewhere, maybe it's on the last page of the 50+ proposals. Clients are busy busy people. And I and many others have already tried to make aware of this situation, but to no avail yet. And no, has nothing to do with the economy. If anything, when economy is down, companies spend more so they can "survive/win." - Hiring a local W2 (fulltime) is going to be many times more costly than hiring a freelancer on Upwork (you don't have to pay employer taxes on freelancers, don't have to worry about their healthcare, their dental, their paid vacation, 401k retirement, ...). Clients absolutely would have 0 hesitations to hire on Upwork if they are presented with the right talent they're looking for.
