The number of software development jobs in the U.S. has increased since February 2025, the launch date of Anthropic’s Claude Code, even as overall job numbers have declined, complicating predictions that AI will quickly eliminate demand for developers.
Concerns about the future of software development careers are well-founded and are only growing as companies adopt AI-powered coding tools, especially as the tools continue to improve. According to Microsoft’s software development platform GitHub, going back to 2023, half of all code in AI-enabled projects was about to be written with AI.
Some AI experts argue that AI-authored code across the GitHub platform has passed the halfway point. Although GitHub hasn’t confirmed it, in October it reported that one in three “pull requests” (a process in which programmers contributing to the development propose changes to the code of a project) involve an AI agent. GitHub said a year ago that number was less than one in ten. “If this pace continues, within the next two years, most of the code pushed to GitHub could be written by agents. Much of the code may never be fully read by humans,” the company said.
Against this backdrop, labor market researchers say the profession is evolving, not disappearing. According to data from Indeed Hiring Lab, the number of software development jobs in the U.S. has increased nearly 15% since February 2025, bucking both the overall job market and coding data.
Some economists say the rebound in software jobs confirms the half-baked view about AI and the job market. “It wasn’t that long ago that we saw headlines saying we don’t need software developers anymore,” McKinsey North America chairman Eric Kutcher said in a recent interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” Rather, he said, software developers working with AI remain in high demand as companies generate more code than ever before. “We’re seeing even more growth in places where we expected the biggest population shifts to occur,” Kutcher said.
Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly adept at research, drafting, coding, and administrative tasks. All of these tasks have traditionally been given to junior employees in each industry.
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A recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute on AI and the future of work points out that the software development sector’s early decline was not just about AI. While AI has automated software development tasks in recent years, this rebound comes after a significant drop from a hiring peak in 2022, when tech companies pulled back following a pandemic-era hiring surge.
But even after the recovery, software development job openings remain about 27.5% below pre-pandemic levels, according to data from Indeed Hiring Lab. Importantly, the increase is concentrated in senior-level roles and more experienced AI-oriented positions. According to Indeed Hiring Lab research, senior positions accounted for 71% of the growth in software development positions from May 2025 to May 2026. Job titles that mentioned AI accounted for 37% of the increase.
AI tools have the potential to enable companies to write code faster than developers could do alone. GitHub leaders have said in the past that no more than 80% of the code could eventually be written by AI, especially as developers become accustomed to using AI tools. But it could also mean a shift in demand for workers to those who can evaluate AI-generated code and problems and connect new tools to an organization’s broader technology systems.
Indeed Hiring Lab economist Sneha Puri said companies are realizing that even if AI can handle some technical coding tasks, they still need developers to oversee that work, improve the product and help clients incorporate the technology into their daily operations. One example is the growing demand for talent who can not only build AI tools, but also help companies apply them.
Early gains in the AI era may be short-lived, and young workers remain at risk
Now, factors like the ones Puri cited are helping software developers become among the early winners of the AI transformation of the labor market. A recent analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data by economist Steve Ratner found that while software developers were one of the occupation categories that showed positive growth from May 2023 to May 2025, it only matched the growth of all occupations and was well below the pace of growth for traditional blue-collar jobs associated with building AI data centers.
Human researchers have discovered that even with automation, humans are still needed to oversee the automation and solicit user input. But the researchers cautioned that “it is by no means certain that this pattern will continue in the future.”
In a report on pull requests, GitHub says that as AI puts out more code, and with it the risk of that code, humans need to scale with the technology that monitors AI’s work. But that may never be possible. “As the amount of code increases, there is a need to prevent further exposure and reduce the human effort required for the remaining code. Otherwise, the amount of vulnerabilities being introduced will become unsustainable,” the report reads.
For the youngest employees, the outlook in the software development field remains uncertain. According to Stanford University’s 2026 AI Index, employment in AI-exposed fields for 22- to 25-year-olds has declined by 16% since the rise of generative AI, and those identified as early software developers have seen a larger employment decline of 20% as the role of older developers expands.
This change has made the path to software development more difficult for new graduates, even as the demand for more experienced workers has increased. Puri said students need to become familiar with AI tools, but they should not ignore core skills when working with AI tools. “Being able to use AI in your work to improve efficiency is a great place to start,” Puri says. “But communication, interpersonal skills and leadership are also very important,” she added.
Puri said employers also have a role to play in ensuring routes to the site. “Today’s entry-level talent becomes tomorrow’s senior expert,” she said. “If employers don’t build this pipeline now, they won’t have the senior talent they need in 10 years.”
Although job growth in the AI era is difficult to predict, the long-term outlook for software developers remains positive, according to an August report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment of software developers is projected to increase by 10% from 2025 to 2035, increasing the number of jobs from approximately 1.72 million to 1.89 million and adding approximately 174,700 jobs.
