Hiring freeze or just extended timelines?

We've had a couple of positions open up in my team over the last quarter, and the hiring process has been noticeably slower than usual. It used to take maybe 4-6 weeks from posting to offer. Now, we're going on 10 weeks for one role and the HR team keeps saying 'candidate pools are being thoroughly evaluated' and 'budgetary approvals are pending.' It feels more like a soft hiring freeze than just a long process. We definitely could use the extra hands, but it seems like bringing new people on is a much bigger hurdle now than it was even six months ago. Anyone else in other departments seeing the same thing with external recruiting?