Jobs and college enrollments in computer science grew considerably over the period from 2008-2025; job downturns began in 2022 including fewer job postings, hiring freezes and layoffs, and with no significant signs of recovery, college enrollments are beginning to be affected.
As these downturns have coincided with the widespread availability of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, many news articles have suggested that we may see ongoing declines in the information technology job market, and these articles have questioned whether computer science remains a good choice of college major.
Is there some between job loss and increased AI use? There is some linkage, but there is no evidence that we are seeing the beginning of a long-term trend.
Today, software tools are widely available and stable and are integral to the operations of most industries. The software industry is mature in that we are seeing regular updates along with a small number of wholly new products. This alone would be enough to slow job growth; entry-level coding jobs are outsourced globally, and remote working technologies enable companies to replace in-house employees with contractors.
We have also experienced inflation and higher interest rates. These drive cost-cutting measures and reduced investment, which in turn translate to layoffs, hiring freezes and reductions in entry-level positions. Even without the widespread availability of generative AI chatbots, the current economy encourages many companies to try to make efficient use of the systems and software they already own, rather than buying or building new systems.
At the same time we are seeing downturns in jobs and college enrollments, we are also seeing large investments in AI. Currently around 30 percent of the current valuation of the stock market is shared by five companies who are deeply involved in AI, and Fortune has reported that 75 percent of the S&P 500’s gains since the beginning of the current bull market are in companies heavily involved in AI.
AI investment seems more likely to have us headed toward a stock-market correction rather than causing a long-term downturn in employment in IT.
So is generative AI affecting the IT job market? Currently it is; the funds for investment in AI must be found, and one of the places that those funds have been found is through layoffs. TechCrunch tracks layoffs, and with 90,000 technology layoffs so far this year, following about 200,000 layoffs between 2022 and 2024, there are many skilled IT workers who are currently unemployed or under-employed. Many of the layoffs have been of senior developers, with companies gambling that AI can enable junior developers to be as effective as teams led by senior developers.
This approach has not been successful–you can find stories of AI-led teams causing production disruptions and financial losses across many websites for tech workers. In concrete terms, a recent MIT study reports that “Just 5 percent of integrated AI pilots are extracting millions in value, while the vast majority remain stuck with no measurable [profit and loss] impact.”
The conclusion that we can draw from this is that AI is not a panacea that will lead companies to profitability, and if they want to return to growing profitability, they are going to have to start rehiring developers and senior developers.
Just like the computer, AI is a general-purpose technology. Historically, general-purpose technologies have been drivers of economic growth, and they also transform workplaces. Old jobs disappear, but new jobs are created in greater numbers. Jobs in coding or Web design will be outsourced or given over to AI, but jobs in code review and developing customized AI agents will increase.
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT can produce code that runs–but generative AI is only as good as the data it is trained on. The vast majority of code that is available for training is related to non-commercial software–in other words, code on educational websites and project code at sites like GitHub and Kaggle. These sites do not contain production-level code with error-trapping and foolproof user interfaces; this means that AI-generated code will not contain such items either, which means that deploying AI-generated software in a commercial setting is inherently risky.
So, technology eliminates jobs–but it does not cause widespread, long-term unemployment. Past experiences suggest that the number of IT jobs will increase again, but students should focus on computational thinking and upgrade their mathematical skills to prepare themselves for the new careers that AI will create.
Stephen Addison, Ph.D., is a professor of physics and dean of the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.
