Employment for computer programmers in the U.S. has plummeted to its lowest level since 1980—years before the internet existed | Fortune

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Abstraction: AI correlates with historic drop in US programming jobs

Key points:

US computer-programmer employment has dropped to its lowest level since 1980 (pre-internet), per BLS Current Population Survey data; peaked above 700,000 during the dot-com boom, now roughly half that.
A 27.5% plummet in the 12-month average of programming employment has occurred since ~2023, coinciding with ChatGPT's introduction in late 2022.
Klarna froze hiring after deploying an OpenAI chatbot it claimed did the work of 700 full-time employees (customer service, not engineering).
Software developer jobs (distinct from programmers) are projected to grow 17% from 2023–2033; programmer jobs projected to decline 10% in the same period.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna estimates AI will write 20–30% of code; Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei forecasted up to 90%.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said AI could do the work of mid-level engineers; experts split on whether this is net negative or a productivity shift.

Connections: Openai · Chatgpt · Klarna · Anthropic · AI Impact On Employment · Large Language Models