You're right about the downturn, it's impossible to run a team for long without a full order book. That said, I think you'd have this problem for an offshore team too, perhaps with a much longer "sat on hands" cash runway.

I have a friend who's set up an offshore team and he saves 70% on developer salaries from what I can infer.

We employ within Europe and the UK, our average dev salary is around $65,000.