The number of job openings for software engineers on Indeed has dropped by more than a third compared to five years ago. Artificial intelligence is certainly one reason. The same technology that can make programmers more productive seems to be reducing the demand for hiring. At the same time, the demand for skilled technical workers is expected to increase significantly by 2033.
The number of job openings for software engineers on Indeed has dropped by more than a third compared to five years ago. Artificial intelligence is certainly one reason. The same technology that can make programmers more productive seems to be reducing the demand for hiring. At the same time, the demand for skilled technical workers is expected to increase significantly by 2033.
According to Indeed, in the US, the number of vacancies has decreased by 35% compared to pre-pandemic levels and 3.5 times compared to the peak in 2022. This is worse than in mid-2020, when everything was closing.
Trends look similar around the world: Canada is in a similar situation to the US. The UK, France, and Germany are somewhat different. Australia is the only country where the number of vacancies is not lower than in 2020.
The graph below compares software development to the total number of jobs in other industries in the United States as of February 2025.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently said that the tech giant may not hire a single engineer in 2025 because artificial intelligence tools will allow the company's engineers to do so much more.
“We’re seeing a 30% increase in productivity in the engineering department, and we’re going to continue to grow that,” said the Salesforce CEO.
Productivity gains are great news for programmers who have jobs, but the rise of artificial intelligence can be a concern for those looking for work.
A year ago, American startup Cognition Labs released , according to its own terms, the first artificial intelligence software engineer, Devin. But a month later, IT professionals doubted its power, having caught the AI in a lie.
There was a panic among programmers back then that AI would take away jobs. The concern has subsided over time, but at the same time, AI could take over roles that have long served as a training ground for junior engineers.
“Junior engineers have a small target behind their backs,” said Jesal Gadiya, head of engineering at Thoughtful AI.
In February, the founder of the American e-commerce platform Gumroad, Sahil Lavinia, announced that the company would no longer hire Junos and Midas, entrusting their work to artificial intelligence. A month earlier, Zuckerberg said that AI could already begin to replace mid-level developers at Meta, and that the code for the company's products would already be written by AI engineers.
But for those with strong technical skills, the news isn't so bad.
Lighthouse Labs, a Canadian company that offers coding boot camps, said in January that global demand for skilled workers in data analytics, cybersecurity and cloud computing is outstripping supply. Lighthouse Labs believes that's partly because the demand for people with skills in areas like machine learning exists far beyond the tech industry.
In late August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that demand for software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers would grow 17% from 2023 to 2033. The agency noted that this would be much faster than growth in the overall labor market.
According to the World Economic Forum , there will be significant job growth in robotics, autonomous systems, and energy production between 2025 and 2030, with professionals in fields such as renewable energy engineering and electric vehicle technology expected to have greater job security.
According to GitLab, developers only spend about a quarter of their time coding. Madars Biss, a technical writer and front-end developer, previously told Business Insider that he expects developers to spend less time creating code and more time managing the code generated by AI.
AI tools, according to Biss, can “handle most of the routine and repetitive tasks of a developer,” while “humans focus on management, re-examination, and creativity.”
