Laravel API calls to external API fails when called via Job but works otherwise

I am calling an External API from my Laravel App via queues, but for some reason, when I dispatch the calls from the queue, the API call takes significantly longer than when called outside of a queue.

I am using php8.1 and Laravel 8.

Here's a class I have that makes the call to the external API:

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http;

class ProcessApiData
{
   public function run(App\Models\User $user)
   {
      info("{$user->id} -------> STARTED PROCESSING AT:" . now());
      
      try{
         $responses = Http::pool(fn(Pool $pool) => [
            $pool->as('requestOne')
                 ->acceptJson()
                 ->timeout(90)
                 ->post('https://requestOne.com', ['username' => $user->username]),
            $pool->as('requestTwo')
                 ->acceptJson()
                 ->timeout(90)
                 ->post('https://requestTwo.com', ['username' => $user->username])
         ]);
         info("REQUEST ONE TOTAL TIME: " . $responses['requestOne']->handlerStats()['total_time'])
         info("REQUEST TWO TOTAL TIME: " . $responses['requestTwo']->handlerStats()['total_time'])
         return [
             'reqOne' => $responses['requestOne']->json(),
             'reqTwo' => $responses['requestTwo']->json()
         ];
      } catch(\Exception $e){
         return $e->getMessage();
      }

   }

}

Then in my Job class, I simply call this API caller class:

class RunUserJob implements ShouldQueue
{
   use Dispatchable, InteractsWithQueue, Queueable, SerializesModels;

   public function __construct(public User $user)
   {
        $this->onQueue(QueueNames::USER_QUEUE);
   }

   public function __invoke()
   {
     
      // call the API class
      $result = App\Actions\ProcessApiData::run($this->user);

      $this->user->update(['processed' => true]);

   }
   
   public function failed(\Exception $e)
   {
      $this->user->updated(['processed' => false]);
   }

}

Then I dispatch the jobs as follows:

foreach(App\Models\User::all() as $user){

    RunUserJob::dispatch($user);
}

When I dispatch this job, say for 10 users, I can get an average processing time of 10 seconds for the first 7 and then the last 3 take about 3 minutes to run and eventually timeout. I am running many workers and I can see that all the jobs called the ProcessApiData action about 1 second after they are queued (because I have info("{$user->id} -------> STARTED PROCESSING AT:" . now()); in the ProcessApiData, so there is no delay in the workers processing the jobs.

However, when I execute the following in tinker, I get the responses for all the API calls all in less than 10 seconds:

foreach(App\Models\User::all() as $user){
    ProcessApiData::run($user);
}

Is there anything that calling the ProcessApiData class in queued jobs would make the call take longer than when called directly without a queue?

NB: I have stress-tested the external API using JMeter and there are no issues with even 100 concurrent requests.