Metro bundle extremely slow and gets stuck with babel v7.17.x

Description

I had a huge issue bundling the app for development and production as soon as I updated the following packages to the latest version:

"@babel/core": "7.16.12",
"@babel/plugin-proposal-decorators": "7.16.7",
"@babel/runtime": "7.16.7",
"babel-jest": "27.5.1",
"metro-react-native-babel-preset": "0.67.0",

Basically, one of the mentioned packages is causing metro to bundle extremely slow and finally get stuck at approximately 90%.
After I reverted the package.json back to an older version, it still didn't help because of the ^. I had to remove ^ from the packages I mentioned, and it was back to normal.

I'm guessing it's a babel issue (I also updated React Native to 0.67.3), but I think you guys should know, I spent all day yesterday trying to resolve this (I also looked on here) without any luck.

Also, after all of that I was required to install 2 additional packages:

"@babel/plugin-transform-arrow-functions": "7.16.7",
"@babel/plugin-transform-shorthand-properties": "7.16.7",

Version

0.67.3

Output of npx react-native info

System:
    OS: macOS 12.2.1
    CPU: (12) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz
    Memory: 606.40 MB / 16.00 GB
    Shell: 5.8 - /bin/zsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 16.14.0 - /usr/local/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.17 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
    npm: 8.5.2 - /usr/local/bin/npm
    Watchman: 2022.02.21.00 - /usr/local/bin/watchman
  Managers:
    CocoaPods: 1.11.2 - /usr/local/bin/pod
  SDKs:
    iOS SDK:
      Platforms: DriverKit 21.2, iOS 15.2, macOS 12.1, tvOS 15.2, watchOS 8.3
    Android SDK:
      API Levels: 30, 31
      Build Tools: 30.0.2, 31.0.0, 32.0.0
      System Images: android-30 | Google Play Intel x86 Atom
      Android NDK: Not Found
  IDEs:
    Android Studio: Bumblebee 2021.1.1 Patch 2 Bumblebee 2021.1.1 Patch 2
    Xcode: 13.2.1/13C100 - /usr/bin/xcodebuild
  Languages:
    Java: 1.8.0_292 - /usr/bin/javac
  npmPackages:
    @react-native-community/cli: Not Found
    react: 17.0.2 => 17.0.2
    react-native: 0.67.3 => 0.67.3
    react-native-macos: Not Found
  npmGlobalPackages:
    *react-native*: Not Found

Steps to reproduce

Running npx react-native start after updating all the packages to the latest version.

Snack, code example, screenshot, or link to a repository

No response

Start with the package versions in package.json and reproduce the problem by running npx react-native start with the listed Babel and React Native versions. Compare bundling with the caret ranges and pinned versions, then narrow down which package causes the stall; done means the regression is identified and bundling no longer gets stuck near 90%.