There may be fewer EXPs than a year ago, I have no no idea. But even if there are fewer other changes have more than offset the effect.
There are certainly more EXPs than before the merger, and they are chasing not that many more F seats. I think there are fewer flights between AUS and DFW than before the merger, with a combined LAA and LUS elite pool chasing the fewer F seats. Yes, total seats available may be up, as most flights that used to be MD-80s are now A321s, but each plane still has 16 F seats. Tighter revenue management, one month less of eligibility, and more people buying premium tickets outright mean fewer opportunities to use the smaller number of SWUs we're granted. I certainly have buying more front cabin tickets than in the past. Long hold times for the EXP desk were very rare before the merger, but both the quantity and quality of agents have since diminished.
If pre-merger AA policies and practices were still in place, an EQD requirement would have reduced EXP numbers and there would likely have been a discernible net positive for the EXPs who still qualified. But it's impossible to tease out any real effect from EQDs in the context of everything else that has happened to the system, which has been negative overall.
I say this as I have an AUS-DFW-SFO roundtrip this week for which two segments have cleared and F is full on the other two.