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Job Market: Software Engineers (US)
Brief
Tracking the job market for software engineers in the United States: official salary and vacancy statistics, major hiring/layoff waves at industry companies. Not needed: individual job postings, personal anecdotes from forums.
Description
The software engineering job market is bifurcating sharply rather than uniformly weakening — shrinking for generalist and entry-level roles while specialized AI engineering talent remains in real demand, with entry pathways for new graduates narrowing structurally.
Layoffs
So far in 2026, tech companies have announced roughly 435 layoff events affecting over 164,000 people (about 874 per day), with Q1 2026 alone seeing about 52,050 job cuts — the highest Q1 total since 2023. Oracle, Amazon, Meta, and Dell account for most of the activity, with Oracle alone announcing up to 30,000 cuts in March.
AI as a Driver
56% of 2026 layoff events explicitly cite AI, automation, or machine learning, affecting over 156,000 workers across 150 companies — even as a METR study found experienced engineers were 19% less productive using AI tools on real-world tasks.
Hiring and Postings
As of late April 2026, Indeed's software development job postings index sat 26.9% below its pre-pandemic baseline and 68.8% below its 2022 peak. New-grad hiring at large tech firms is down over 50% from 2019 levels, with new grads now just 7% of Big Tech hires. Apple and Google are exceptions, with Google advertising 62% more engineering roles than a year earlier.
Skills Shift
AI-related skills now appear in 42% of software job listings, up from just 8% in 2022.