Hey, we don’t even need to wait for the complete defunding of the arts as it has already happened historically.
Two examples:
Dotcom crash in 2001 which left scores of recent CS/engineering graduates and majors about to graduate severely underemployed or even unemployed for long stretches. One friend with a CS Masters from a respectable institution ended up working as a floor rep at a big box store for a while along with many others and others were unemployed for long stretches. One car rental rep I met in 2011 while a friend was looking to rent cars turned out to have been a CS major who graduated into the crash and after long stretch of un/underemployment ended up never working in the CS field.
ChemE in the '70s/early '80s. Countless accounts from family, family friends, and older colleagues/supervisors about how ChemE grads ended up driving taxis, waiting tables, or doing long stretches as SAHPs or unemployed because there were far too few jobs for the ChemE grads/majors out there. Things were so bad some who were HS students in the period clearly remembered being told by older relatives and adults who were/knew about the engineering job markets to avoid ChemE as the odds of getting a job were worse than a fresh inexperienced actor successfully landing a leading role in a high profile Hollywood film.