Angular 1.x uses a version of JQ Lite, and will utilize jQuery if it's already loaded on the page.
That being said, I don't think knowing jQuery is very valuable for JS developers anymore. Browser standards have come a long way and frameworks are handling your DOM writes for you, so that major use case for jQuery is gone in any website that requires substantial scripting.
No popular current generation framework relies on jQuery. The most recent one I can come up with is Angular 1's reliance on their jQlite micro-library but would use the full jQuery if it was on the page.
I'd never heard of this library and I spend a couple hours a day reading developer news so I wouldn't call this popular.
I'd also argue that this as a current generation framework. I only did a brief skim but the patterns remind me of a Knockout or Enyo codebase with data binding between components doing explicit dom manipulation. The contributors tab shows a 2014 start but I'd have guessed a 2010-2011 start from looking at the code.
You'd be surprised. UI5 is made by SAP as their go-to UI technology. SAP's profit last year was over 6B euro and it's used in almost every large enterprise out there. It's just hard to see as a tech company because it's not consumer facing.
I hope you don't take my comment as too much of an insult to your work. I consider the hallmarks of the current generation of frameworks to be component composition, framework based change synchronization (KVO, diffing, dirty checking), and the avoidance of DOM interaction (jsx, templates). Not being on the newest trend doesn't automatically make something bad and it's clear that you and your team put significant effort into your framework so I'll have to do a much more thorough investigation before I have a real opinion on it.
I haven't touched jQuery in over 2 years. It's not necessary anymore as the browsers I support are following standards. Even though the syntax is a little bit nicer than vanilla js I don't see any real advantage in using jQuery anymore. jQuery did a lot for the web (it pushed browsers to keeping standards and it brought native implementations like querySelector), but I think the time has come to move on.
I know for a fact that React doesn't. And it's now possible to do quite a bit of element selection (and style flipping), AJAX, and JSON manipulation with pure javascript.
That being said, I agree with your last statement. For better or worse, jQuery still seems to be king.
Will jQuery earn you as much money as on the peak of first gen webapps craze? No, totally no"
I myself was earning CAD $90k just in plain salary at the time when jQuery craze was on its peak and when "a dedicated front-end developer" meant a jQuery developer
Honestly saying, I had no realisation how shitty my code was back then, and now I feel ridiculous when I realise how much a bad dev can earn as long as he does something considered "trendy"
This just isn't true. OP mentioned React, Vue.js, and Mithril. None of these use jQuery as a dependency. Neither does Angular, Backbone, or Ember.js.