Harriers have been falling out of the sky for a long time, even when the money was flowing. I wasn't a Marine, but I went through flight school with a bunch of them and the Harrier guys didn't like staying in that platform very long. One of my friends did a tour in Harriers that started in 2003, the height of the Iraq War, and he finished a three year tour with a whopping 270 hours. His peers in other strike platforms would have gotten somewhere between 750 and 1000 hours in the same time depending on their deployment cycle and platform.
I know quite a few Harrier guys that were scrambling to get into the F-35 program even when they never expected to fly the jet. just to get out of Harriers.