- Computer-programming employment in the U.S. has reached its lowest level since 1980, according to data from the Current Population Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The fall correlates with the introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Buy now-pay later firm Klarna froze hiring last year after partnering with OpenAI on a chatbot that it claimed did the work of 700 full-time employees.
There are now fewer computer programmers in the U.S. than there were when Pac-Man was first invented—years before the internet existed as we know it. Computer-programmer employment dropped to its lowest level since 1980, the Washington Post reported, using data from the Current Population Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There were more than 300,000 computer-programming jobs in 1980. The number peaked above 700,000 during the dot-com boom of the early 2000s but employment opportunities have withered to about half that today. U.S. employment grew nearly 75% in that 45-year period, according to the Post.
Computer programmers are different from software developers, who liaise between programmers and engineers and design bespoke solutions—a much more diverse set of responsibilities compared to programmers, who mostly carry out the coding work directly. Software development jobs are expected to grow 17% from 2023 to 2033, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bureau meanwhile projects about a 10% decline in computer programming employment opportunities from 2023 to 2033.
There has been a 27.5% plummet in the 12-month average of computer-programming employment since about 2023—coinciding with OpenAI’s introduction of ChatGPT the year before. ChatGPT can handle coding tasks without a user needing more detailed knowledge of the code being written.
The correlation between the decline of programmer jobs and the rise of AI tools signals to some experts that the burgeoning technology could begin to cost some coding experts their jobs.
“Without getting hysterical,” Mark Muro, who researches technology and workplace innovation at the Brookings Institution, told the Post, “the unemployment jump for programming really does look at least partly like an early, visible labor market effect of AI.”
Is AI really taking coding jobs?
Some companies have already admitted to AI playing a role in their hiring and firing decisions. Buy now-pay later firm Klarna froze hiring last year after partnering with OpenAI on a chatbot that it claimed did the work of 700 full-time employees. That work, however, was addressing customer service inquiries, not engineering.
“We are in the fortunate position of being a growing company, so for Klarna, AI enables us to grow more quickly without adding headcount as quickly as we would have done previously,” a Klarna spokesperson previously told Fortune.
But changes in employment for programmers in particular could be coming down the pike. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said AI could do the coding work of mid-level engineers.
Despite some experts saying dwindling computer-programming jobs could be an early sign of AI’s impact on jobs, others believe these changes won’t necessarily be bad news for coders. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said there will still be a need for human programmers, even as AI is able to automate coding tasks. Krishna predicts AI will be able to write 20 to 30% of code. (By contrast, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei forecasted up to 90%.)
Programmers will be required to perform complicated tasks, Krishna argued, and AI can instead serve to eliminate the simpler, time-consuming tasks those programmers would once need to perform, which would increase productivity and subsequently company performance.
“History has shown that the most productive company gains market share,” he said in a SXSW panel last week. “And then you can provide more products, which lets you get more market share.”
