The higher memory consumption may be due to a couple of things: Newer versions and features that make higher demands on the hardware, and (this is a good thing) more use of GPU acceleration. The GPU thing is important because on Apple Silicon, the OS and the graphics hardware share the same pool of Unified Memory. If newer versions need more graphics memory for proper GPU acceleration, but there isn’t a lot of Unified Memory left over to hand to the GPU because there’s only 8GB, then things can get tight.
Keep in mind that for this type of work, on the Windows PC side it’s now standard to buy a GPU card with 8GB of memory just for the GPU, in addition to 16GB or more of regular RAM for the OS and apps But your computer has 8GB total that it has to divide among the OS, all running apps, and the GPU. So, an 8GB Mac or PC has a bigger memory management challenge, so it is more likely to see yellow Memory Pressure.
As Apple and Adobe advance their software, memory requirements often go up. 8GB of memory might have worked OK in the past, but those days are ending and there are clues about that. One clue is in the Lightroom Classic system requirements: For the last few versions, 8GB is not the Recommended level, it’s only the Minimum. 16GB is Recommended. In the future, for Lightroom Classic I will not buy a Mac that has less than 24GB. (My current Mac has 32GB and Lightroom Classic runs great alongside other apps.)
The other clue is that this week, Apple stopped selling laptops with 8GB. Not only do all of the new M4 MacBook Pro models start at 16GB, Apple also upgraded the existing M2 and M3 MacBook Air lines so that now they too start at 16GB.
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