There had been concerns that AI would disrupt many programming jobs, and this is now beginning to appear in the data.
The number of software job postings in the US is down 70 percent from its post-Covid high. The FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) Index for Software job postings in the US had touched a high of 230 in 2022. But it’s since crashed to 70 levels, showing a near 70 percent decline in the demand for software roles.
Before Covid had hit — the index stood at 100. As news of the pandemic had first spread, the index hit a low of around 65. But as governments across the world announced monetary and fiscal measures to spur the economy, the index surged, reaching 230 levels in 2022. This period had coincided with the startup funding boom around the world, which had seen India and other countries mint record numbers of unicorns. But as the funding winter had begun in 2023, the number of job listings had also fallen. But the number of job listings has continued to fall, and is now below even the levels it was in February 2020, which was five years to ago.
And while it’s possible that the lowered job listings are because of the glut in 2022 — most companies could’ve at that point already filled their software engineering requirements for the next few years — it’s also very possible that the lowered job listings are because of AI. AI systems have made the average programmer extremely efficient, and has enabled them to write code much faster. This means that a single programmer can now do the job of several programmers, which in turn could’ve reduced the demand and job postings for software engineers.
And AI systems are getting ever better at coding. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that he world’s best programmer will be an AI by the end of 2025, and this AI will be able to work 24*7 at a fraction of the cost of any human programmer. Former Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque has said that AI is already better than outsourced Indian programmers, and said that AI could end up severely impacting their jobs. And with US job data showing that software engineering jobs are becoming more and more scarce, there might be alarm bells ringing for millions of rank-and-file software engineers all around the world.