U.S. programmer employment hits a new low since 1980 due to AI shock

According to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rapid development of artificial intelligence has caused the number of jobs in the computer programming field in the United States to drop to the lowest level since 1980. In 1980, there were more than 300,000 programming positions, but now it has been reduced to half of what it was before.

While software development jobs are expected to grow 17% over the next decade, jobs for computer programming are expected to fall by 10%. The average employment in the programming industry has dropped by 27.5% since 2023, which is closely related to OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT tool, which can handle coding tasks efficiently.

Experts point out that the rising unemployment rate in the programming industry is significantly related to the development of artificial intelligence. IBM CEO Alvin Krishna believes that although artificial intelligence can replace part of the coding work, human programmers are still indispensable and will undertake more complex tasks in the future, and artificial intelligence will help improve overall productivity.