Software jobs before and after ChatGPT

People often date the slump in software hiring to ChatGPT. The postings say otherwise: openings for software developers peaked in early 2022 and had fallen by about a third before ChatGPT came out. In those same months interest rates started rising, a tax change took effect that slowed how fast companies could deduct what they paid developers, and the pandemic hiring boom unwound. Below are job postings and payrolls since 2019, with AI releases and everything else marked on the same clock.

Job postings on Indeed, by occupation

People on payrolls, by industry (BLS)

Index base (= 100)

Events

AI releases Everything else

What the chart shows

What it does not show

Postings are not hires. A company can post fewer openings and still keep everyone it has, or post the same opening on several sites.
Indeed sorts postings into occupations by job title, and only counts its own site. The payroll series count everyone working at a kind of company (sales and support staff at a software publisher included), not software developers wherever they work.
Nothing here separates one cause from another. Rate hikes, the tax change, the end of the pandemic boom, layoffs, offshoring and AI all land in the same years, and a rule on the chart marks when something happened, not what it did.
The latest BLS months are preliminary and get revised, and each February BLS re-benchmarks the past year. Indeed revised its whole history when it changed its seasonal adjustment in November 2024.

The events on the chart

AI releases use the same dates and sources as the AI Progress map. The numbers match the small tags on the chart.

Sources

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics (national, seasonally adjusted): series CES5051320001 (software publishers), CES6054150001 (computer systems design and related services), CES5000000001 (information), CES0000000001 (total nonfarm). BLS Public Data API v2, bls.gov/ces. Data .
Indeed Hiring Lab, Indeed Job Postings Index, US total postings by occupational sector and in aggregate, seasonally adjusted, 7-day trailing average, February 1, 2020 = 100. GitHub, hiring-lab/job_postings_tracker, CC BY 4.0. Data through ; averaged to calendar months here, and a month still in progress is left off.
Each event's source is listed with it above.

Built from scripts/build.mjs. No figure here is estimated; every line is the published series, rebased. Part of apps.lawrencewu.net.