According to CNBC, since the launch of Anthropic's Claude Code in February 2025, the number of software development job postings in the United States has not declined but instead increased. Data from the Indeed Hiring Lab shows that during this period, software job hiring rose by nearly 15%, while the overall job market shrank by 7%. Kutch, chairman of McKinsey's North America division, was not surprised: when the total amount of code written by companies reached a new high, the demand for developers in the AI era remains strong.

However, the growth is highly concentrated in senior and AI-related positions—between May 2025 and May of the following year, senior roles accounted for 71% of the increase in software hiring, and positions with the word "AI" made up 37%. In other words, the expansion is at the top, while the base is shrinking.

Junior roles are squeezed, triggering an alarm in the talent pipeline

The structural divide directly affects recent graduates. According to the Stanford 2026 AI Index, after the rise of generative AI, employment in AI-related fields for people aged 22 to 25 decreased by 16%, while early-career software developers saw a larger drop, about 20%. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also confirms this: data scientists grew by 36% between 2023 and 2025, while data entry jobs fell by nearly 20%. Indeed expert Pri warned students to be proficient in AI tools, but should not neglect core skills such as communication and leadership; a more urgent warning comes from the talent pipeline itself—"today's entry-level workers will be tomorrow's senior experts, and if we don't invest now, companies will have no talent available in ten years."

In the long run, it's not a dead end: the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the total number of software developers to grow by 10% from 2025 to 2035, increasing from 1.72 million to 1.89 million.