Young Developers Face Sharp Employment Decline

New research from Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab reveals a troubling trend for early-career software developers. In July 2025, employment for the youngest software developers was 20 percent below its late fall 2022 peak, according to data analysed by Erik Brynjolfsson and his team.

The decline extends beyond individual snapshots. In January 2024, the United States employed fewer software developers than it had six years earlier.

Stark Age Divide in AI-Exposed Jobs

The picture changes dramatically for older workers. Employment among workers aged 30 and older grew between 6 percent and 13 percent in high-AI-exposure jobs over the same period from late 2022 to July 2025.

Stanford researchers found that early-career workers in roles with tasks that can be easily automated are most vulnerable to AI displacement, suggesting that automation capability, rather than job category alone, determines vulnerability.

Rising Graduate Unemployment

The employment pressures on young workers extend to recent college graduates. Unemployment rates for new college graduates reached 5.6 percent in early 2026, up 1.6 percentage points from three years earlier, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

The Research

These findings come from a paper titled “Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence,” authored by Erik Brynjolfsson and his team at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and published in November 2025.

Source: ADP Research