27 May 2025 · 2 min
Concerns persist that artificial intelligence (AI) could render software developers obsolete, particularly with tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor streamlining certain programming tasks. While these tools undoubtedly boost efficiency—Microsoft’s CEO has estimated that AI could write 30% of all code—the precise impact on productivity remains challenging to quantify. Moreover, productivity gains do not automatically lead to unemployment. In fact, increased efficiency could drive greater demand for software, as lower development costs make projects more accessible, enabling customers to request more complex or numerous applications.
For example, AI-assisted tools allow developers to create simple web applications faster than ever, reducing time spent on repetitive tasks like boilerplate code or debugging. But how do we assess the broader implications for the software development workforce? To understand the interplay between AI, productivity, and employment, we can turn to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
According to the BLS, employment for software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers is projected to grow by 17% from 2023 to 2033, significantly outpacing the average for all occupations (4%).
We can look at data from the last three years:
| Year | Total Population (USA) | Software Developers | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 331,893,745 | 1,364,180 | 0.41% |
| 2022 | 333,287,557 | 1,534,790 | 0.46% |
| 2023 | 334,914,895 | 1,656,880 | 0.49% |
Unfortunately, I do not have the data for 2024 yet. But from 2021 to 2023, the number of software developers in the US has grown both in relative and absolute terms.
Based on this data alone, it seems that the demand for software developers remains strong.
Daniel Lemire, "Is the job market for software developers collapsing?," in Daniel Lemire's blog, May 27, 2025, https://lemire.me/blog/2025/05/27/is-the-job-market-for-software-developers-collapsing/.
[BibTeX]
Bunch of hypothetical fluff. This nonsense that software engineering jobs is supposed to grow from 23-33 is bad analysis and might not have even taken layoffs into account. Not much in the way of new jobs have really been seen unless you’re working on AI itself, and then you’re caught up with having to show you have experience.
It’s a pity you don’t have 2024 and current, would be interesting to see the trend. It looks like these past 12 months layoffs have really accelerated. Take a look at LinkedIn.. I have never seen so many #opentowork badges as right now. I also know several people that are very good developers that are struggling to even get an interview… of course tariffs, economic uncertainty and shift to AI all add to layoffs and hiring freezes
Much hiring during Covid.
Many layoffs since then; so contraction since 2023 and it may not be temporary.
The issue isn’t AI, the drop happened after the over-hiring in COVID, coupled with increasing interest rates, and here in the UK extra employment taxes. Add in a gult of bootcamps and it’s saturated.
AI can do some amazing things, but believing in those results is dangerous. You need to confirm what’s produced. There are already high profile data breaches due to poor security, and without an engineering team you can quickly solve issues in your scalability. I don’t deny AI has done some damage, but most of it is from other sources or those thinking AI can replace the team.
Every data breach I’ve seen has been caused by humans, AI was not involved. AI does NOT replace the engineering team; what it DOES do is make each person more productive, so no need for hiring. Unless, of course, we’re talking about the unintelligent organizations that block the developers from using AI.
Software developers are vital because even though the hype, LLMs cannot solve novel problems, they can tell you how someone has solved it in the past.
My latest project ended up using techniques from the games industry to solve air logistics problems. No LLM could have suggested that or worked out the methodology.
The nature of development will change just as car builders went from carriage building to high efficient production lines.
These statistics are really void of much substance unfortunately. 2024 is where we are provided with potential projections.
Good point however that more complex issues may simply be tackled, where engineers must simply leverage the new tools set rather than fall by the wayside
Nooo, not at all. It’s flourishing, there’s too hiring. I’m tired of so much hiring but the marked wants more. And it’s such an easy job to be a programmer, you just learn a bit of code in 3 months at a summer camp… Easy peasy… So much money, so much hiring, such an easy job. I’m surprised so few people know this
Today I had a very easy development, I thought lets do it by AI. I asked ChatGPT and boy it fucked it all up. Even after repeatedly telling/correcting it no use the output code was all fucked up. I gave up and did it myself. After doing it I thought to myself boy which idiot is going to replace devs with AI.
interesting
While I appreciate the sentiment, the only data that matters is the data starting in late 2024. Even then, the data from 2025 is the most important.
The models simply haven’t been good enough to be reliable up until then. Further, the models weren’t integrated effectively until this time period.
I would put the cutoff at the release of Sonnet 3.5 and it’s integration with Cursor.
TLDR no
These numbers do not seem right. There are millions of people in the USA on work visas which might put H1B and H4 and others in the millions of foreign software developers in the USA. Then there are the people graduating every year from high schools and colleges trying to enter the work force. Software developers have also experienced some of the highest unemployment rates at maybe double or quadruple the general government unemployment rate. We keep here antidotal accounts of people unemployed for extended periods of time and not finding work. How many people consider themselves software developers or software engineers and are unemployed or find themselves forced to work more general IT jobs or in other careers and temp work? There are still not enough jobs for the people qualified and want to do the work. People are over educated now with PhDs working non career full time positions in temp jobs. Even temp jobs now have overly restricted requirements like they think theyre career positions. We’ve seen a transition in the USA from full time with benefits career positions to temporary contract without benefits. Companies like HP and HPE have workforces that are over 70% temporary contractors. There also now seems to be a high amount of churn with people who used to be employed for decades finding many jobs that are limited to 6 month stints or spending significant time unemployed between jobs.
The general job market in the USA is unstable and collapsing with the average length of employment has gone from 5 years to less than 2.
Just because the supply of developers increased does not mean the _demand_ has increased.
Last I checked, the supply of life coaches and the number of laid off developers increased.
Does the increase in life coaches mean there is more demand, or does it just mean it is a popular choice. Do we need more life coaches or developers?
Read any social media site and see stories of developers applying for hundreds of jobs and not even getting interviews.
The problem is so bad that I created yet another site encouraging developers to create their own startups.
Coincidentally, I also developed open source software that I use to reduce my demand for developers! I used to hire freelancers to code and went as far as creating a tool to manage freelancer devs automatically. I simply added code to the tool to manage a local LLM so that I can replace the developers.
OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and Mistral all released tools with similar functionality.
There is an increase in the demand for tools that replace software developers. See Replit, Vercel, and the rise of vibe coding.
The number of vibe coders increased dramatically. That does not mean the _demand_ for vibe coders has increased.
When is the last time you hired a vibe coder or life coach?
Interesting perspective, and it matches my own, pretty much. I’ve never seen an ad for a vibe coder, that pretty much would make no sense. But good developers who use AI effectively are significantly more productive than those who don’t. As for demand for a life coach…. well, we all make mistakes in life, but it’s not clear that a life coach helps much with that problem!
Me, being from the Midwest who grew up in the 90’s watching the same thing happen to manual workers.
The problem is capitalism.
Have you been living under a rock
I view AI as a helper for developers but not a replacement