Increment Number in ZSH script - bash

Question

I am trying to create directories based off of the number of files I have in a directory and my approach is a loop.
I am keeping track of the number by a number variable and want to increment it as so after each even number, create a directory.
This is my code so far:
#!/bin/zsh
LOOP=$(ls 2021/*.xlsx)
totalFiles=$(ls 2021/*.xlsx | wc -l)
directoryCount=0
count=0
for FILE in ${LOOP[#]}; do
echo "BEFORE: $count"
count=$((count+1))
echo "AFTER: $count"
echo $FILE
done
echo "TOTAL FILE: $totalFiles"
echo $count
and the output I get is:
BEFORE: 0
AFTER: 1
2021/*Tanner2103.xlsx
2021/*Tanner2104.xlsx
2021/*Tanner2105.xlsx
2021/*Tanner2106.xlsx
TOTAL FILE: 4
1
I dont understand why count only increments once but the loop is obviously has more iterations than that.
So basically since there are 4 files, I want to split them up into 2 directories, Ill do the logic for that later. But for now Im just trying to get the directory code working.

Answer 1

Ok I feel silly. I thought that ls would come back as an iterable but its actual only return one iteration as a whole.
This is my updated code and it updating like I want.
totalFiles=$(ls 2021/*.xlsx | wc -l)
count=0
for FILE in 2021/**/*(.); do
echo "BEFORE $count"
echo "$FILE"
((count++))
echo "AFTER $count"
done
echo "TOTAL FILE: $totalFiles"
echo $count
result:
BEFORE 0
2021/*Tanner2103.xlsx
AFTER 1
BEFORE 1
2021/*Tanner2104.xlsx
AFTER 2
BEFORE 2
2021/*Tanner2105.xlsx
AFTER 3
BEFORE 3
2021/*Tanner2106.xlsx
AFTER 4
TOTAL FILE: 4
4