<h2 id="what-this-post-covers">What this post covers</h2>
<p>In this short post we look at five years of US software job posts, and what they mean if you are a junior developer or a career switcher trying to get in. You do not need to know how to code to follow it. You only need to know what a job post is: the ad a company puts online when it wants to hire.</p>
<p>We start with one line on a chart: how many software job posts there were from early 2020 to October 2026. Then we see who the drop hit hardest, check whether AI is the reason, and finish with one thing you can do on a real post today.</p>
<p class="bd-statement">By the end you can answer one question in your own words: did AI replace developers, and if not, what changed?</p>

<h2 id="doubled-by-2022-then-a-crash">Doubled by 2022, then a crash</h2>
<p>Picture yourself opening a job board in 2026. It feels much thinner than the stories you heard from 2021 and early 2022, when people said anyone who could code got hired. That feeling is real, and the data backs it up. By 2022, US software job posts had more than doubled. Then they crashed below where they started in 2020, and they still have not climbed back.</p>
<p>These numbers come from Indeed, the job site, which publishes how many software development posts it sees in the US. The series is public on FRED, the data site of the St. Louis Fed. It counts job posts, not hires. A post is an ad for a job, so it tells you how many doors companies are opening, not how many people walked through.</p>
<p>Indeed sets early 2020 (1 February) to 100 and compares every later day with that mark. So the index is a ruler, not a count of jobs. <a href="#figure-1" rel="noopener noreferrer">Figure 1 below</a> draws the whole line on that ruler, from 2020 to October 2026, and marks the four points that matter.</p>
<figure id="figure-1">
  <img src="https://techtipsbymoh.tor1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/techtipsbymoh-production/blogs/software-job-posts-five-years/d65048230bcb494ea7220a4c7fdc74f5_01-software-job-posts-chart.png" alt="Line chart of US software job posts on Indeed since February 2020: 100 at the start, a peak of 234 in February 2022, a low of 61 in May 2025, and 78 in October 2026, under a dashed 2020 level.">
  <figcaption>Figure 1. US software job posts on Indeed, compared with 1 February 2020 (= 100). They peaked at 234 in February 2022, hit 61 in May 2025, and were at 78 in October 2026, still under the 2020 line.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here are the same points as a table, with what each one means compared with early 2020:</p>
<div class="table-responsive scroll-type-one">
  <table class="blog-table">
    <thead>
      <tr><th>Date</th><th>Indeed index</th><th>Compared with early 2020</th></tr>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
      <tr><td>Feb 2020</td><td>100</td><td>The starting mark</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Feb 2022</td><td>234</td><td>More than double (the peak)</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Oct 2023</td><td>75</td><td>About a quarter below</td></tr>
      <tr><td>May 2025</td><td>61</td><td>The lowest point, 39% below</td></tr>
      <tr><td>Oct 2026</td><td>78</td><td>Still 22% below</td></tr>
    </tbody>
  </table>
</div>
<p class="bd-note">Source: Indeed, Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States (FRED series IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE), seasonally adjusted, data through 9 October 2026.</p>
<p class="bd-statement">As of October 2026, US software job posts are still 22% below early 2020.</p>

<h2 id="junior-titles-fell-harder">Junior titles fell harder</h2>
<p>That line is every software post added together. When you split posts by job title, the picture gets worse for juniors. Brendon Bernard at Indeed Hiring Lab did that split in July 2025. His data covers all tech jobs, not only software, and it sorts them into two groups. Senior titles have a word like senior, lead, principal, or manager in the name. Junior titles are everything else.</p>
<p>He compared February 2025 with February 2020, and the two groups did not fall the same amount:</p>
<div class="bd-grid">
  <div class="bd-card-muted">
    <p><strong>Junior titles</strong></p>
    <p>Down 34% compared with early 2020.</p>
  </div>
  <div class="bd-card">
    <p><strong>Senior titles</strong></p>
    <p>Down 19% compared with early 2020.</p>
  </div>
</div>
<p>Fewer posts would be easier to handle if fewer people were looking. That did not happen. Tech posts fell by more than half from the peak, but people who already work in tech kept applying to tech jobs about as often as they did in 2022. In Bernard’s words, competition among job seekers “remains stiff.”</p>
<p class="bd-statement">For a junior, that means fewer seats, and the same number of people still in line for them.</p>
<p>You can see that gap again on the left side of <a href="#figure-2" rel="noopener noreferrer">Figure 2</a>, in the next section.</p>

<h2 id="did-ai-replace-developers">Did AI replace developers?</h2>
<p>Many people blame all of this on AI. The timing does not fit. The drop started in 2022, right after the February peak, and ChatGPT came out at the end of November 2022. So the crash was well underway months before most people had used an AI chatbot. Guillermo Gallacher at Indeed Hiring Lab makes the same point in July 2026: the declines began before ChatGPT.</p>
<p>The same report shows that software posts are growing again. Since late February 2025 they rose almost 15%, while all US job posts fell 7%. That is the small climb from 61 to 78 at the right edge of <a href="#figure-1" rel="noopener noreferrer">Figure 1</a>. If AI had replaced developers, those posts would still be falling, so the honest answer to our question is no. Even after that growth, though, posts are still 22% below early 2020.</p>
<p>What changed is who gets hired. Gallacher looked at where the new growth came from between May 2025 and May 2026. Most of it, 71%, was senior roles. Separately, 37%, more than a third, came from jobs with AI in the title. The right side of <a href="#figure-2" rel="noopener noreferrer">Figure 2 below</a> puts those two numbers next to the junior drop.</p>
<p class="bd-statement">AI did not close the door. It changed who walks through it.</p>
<ul class="bd-pills">
  <li class="bd-pill">Senior roles: 71% of new growth</li>
  <li class="bd-pill">AI in the title: 37% of new growth</li>
</ul>
<figure id="figure-2">
  <img src="https://techtipsbymoh.tor1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/techtipsbymoh-production/blogs/software-job-posts-five-years/538aa058b4d848b7a41b704a508e51aa_02-who-the-rebound-is-for.png" alt="Two bar panels. Left: since early 2020, junior tech titles fell 34% and senior titles 19%. Right: of new software posts from May 2025 to May 2026, 71% were senior roles and 37% had AI in the title.">
  <figcaption>Figure 2. Left: since early 2020, junior titles fell almost twice as hard as senior ones. Right: the new growth is mostly senior roles, and over a third has AI in the title.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p class="bd-callout">Those two groups overlap. A post called “Senior AI Engineer” counts in both, so you cannot add 71% and 37% together.</p>

<h2 id="position-yourself-on-a-real-post">Position yourself on a real post</h2>
<p>Put the last two sections together. There are fewer junior posts, the same crowd is applying, and the new growth is mostly senior and AI-titled. So the classic path for a junior, learning to code and sending the same application everywhere, is not enough anymore. What helps is positioning: making your application look like the roles that are growing. On a real post, that takes three steps:</p>
<ol>
  <li>Read the post before you apply, not after.</li>
  <li>If it names AI tools or AI features, pick one project where you built with them.</li>
  <li>Say what that project does in plain words, at the top of your application.</li>
</ol>
<p>Here is a line from a realistic post: “One project that used an LLM API, RAG, or an AI coding tool.” An LLM API is a service your code calls to ask an AI model a question. RAG means the model answers from your own documents instead of only from what it learned. Now compare two ways to open an application to that post:</p>
<div class="bd-split">
  <div class="bd-card-muted">
    <p><strong>Weak</strong></p>
    <p>“I am a motivated developer and I use ChatGPT every day.”</p>
  </div>
  <div class="bd-card">
    <p><strong>Strong</strong></p>
    <p>“I built a small answer box that reads a folder of docs and cites the paragraph it used to answer.”</p>
  </div>
</div>
<p>The first line could be on any application, because using ChatGPT is not a project. The second line names a thing you built. That answer box is a small RAG project, so it matches the exact line in the post.</p>
<p class="bd-statement">That is positioning. It is not a longer application list.</p>

<h2 id="what-you-can-say-now">What you can say now</h2>
<p>You can walk the same numbers in the companion tip, <a href="/tips/software-job-posts-five-years" rel="noopener noreferrer">Software job posts, five years</a>, which has a short quiz and a practice post to position yourself against.</p>
<p>Positioning came down to two things: one project that matches the post, and an application that says so. If you do not have that project yet, <a href="/courses/rag-you-can-run-crawl-your-site-store-the-pages-answer-from-them" rel="noopener noreferrer">RAG You Can Run</a> walks you through building the answer box from the strong example above: it crawls pages you choose, stores them, and answers from them. Once you have the project, <a href="/courses/tailored-resumes-without-the-lies" rel="noopener noreferrer">Tailored Resumes Without the Lies</a> helps you match your resume and cover letter to each post, so every claim traces back to work you really did. If you would rather shape your projects with someone, <a href="/services/mentorship" rel="noopener noreferrer">mentorship</a> is where we do that together.</p>
<p class="bd-statement">AI did not replace developers. Software job posts are growing again, but most of the new growth is senior roles and roles with AI in the title. So you read each post and show one project that matches it, instead of only sending more applications.</p>

For junior developers: Indeed data shows US software job posts still 22% below 2020. The rebound is senior and AI-titled roles. Here is how to position.

Software job posts since 2020: did AI replace developers?

Software job posts, five years

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