So i can only tell my experience. I didn't know i was autistic for the longest time. I've always been odd but i was masking most of the time and could suppress my sensory issues and had a lot of coping mechanisms to deal with them. Then my cat died and my world got destroyed. My mask was shattered and i can no longer keep it up for long whereas i had it up like 50% of the time before that. I stopped trying to mask at work. Noise has gotten real bad for me where before i was kinda dissociated enough to not have it that present.
Considering the world is getting more and more stressful in general, i imagine a lot of people that masked before are cracking. Also the obvious point of more information being available so a lot more people seek out a diagnosis. I'm also like 70 percent sure my mom is neuro spicy in some way and she developed OCD to keep order in her life out of necessity. Everything that gets untidy has to be cleaned asap, the latest at the end of the day. Her work desk however is chaos. She gets really anxious when i for example leave the living room blanket on the couch she immediately goes and folds it up.