Software Engineer

Software work is where AI has gone furthest. Anthropic's March 2026 labor-market study compared what AI models could do with how people actually use its Claude chatbot at work. Computer programmers came out as the most exposed job it measured: AI was already being used on tasks making up 75% of the job. What AI does best (routine code, boilerplate, tests, simple bug fixes) is the work junior engineers used to be hired to learn on, and that is where the damage shows. A Stanford study of payroll data found that employment of software developers aged 22 to 25 had fallen nearly 20% by September 2025 from its peak in late 2022. Across the jobs most exposed to AI, young workers' employment fell 16% compared with young workers in the least exposed jobs, even after allowing for how each employer was doing overall, while employment of experienced workers held steady. Anthropic found that 22 to 25 year olds became about 14% less likely to start a job in a highly exposed occupation after ChatGPT arrived, though that result is only just statistically significant. Our rubric weighs entry-level impact most heavily, and this is what puts the job at 4.

Layoffs are also on the record now. Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks announced US job cuts, says AI was the top reason employers gave for cuts for the fifth month in a row in July 2026, and that AI has been named in 112,713 announced cuts so far in 2026, about 24% of all cuts. The technology industry announced 149,023 cuts through July, 67% more than a year earlier. Read those numbers with some care: they count what companies say, and Challenger itself notes that naming AI in a layoff announcement "can win over investors," so some cuts get the AI label for show.

It is not a 5 because the profession is not shrinking. BLS projects software developer jobs to grow 10% from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the average for all jobs, with about 106,100 openings a year, and it expects building software for AI itself to drive part of that demand. Anthropic found no clear rise in unemployment among workers in the most exposed jobs, and Challenger counts employers' announced hiring plans across all industries running 25% ahead of 2025. So the evidence points to a much harder way in, not a disappearing job. This is the fastest-moving field on our list and the error bars are wide.

What would change this score. If BLS or payroll data start to show total software developer employment falling, not only junior hiring, this goes to 5. If hiring of new graduates recovers for a year or two while AI coding tools keep spreading, it comes down to 3.