SEOUL, April 24 (AJP) - What has long been feared is beginning to take shape.
From May 20, Meta plans to cut about 8,000 jobs — roughly 10 percent of its workforce — while leaving 6,000 roles unfilled, even as it raises capital spending to as much as $135 billion this year for AI data centers and infrastructure.
“We’re starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person,” Mark Zuckerberg said during an earnings call, outlining plans to develop a so-called CEO agent.
Microsoft has also offered voluntary buyouts to about 8,750 U.S. employees, even as it accelerates investment in artificial intelligence.
Its chief executive, Satya Nadella, has repeatedly highlighted internal AI adoption, saying it has driven significant productivity gains. In April 2025, he said AI was already handling as much as 30 percent of the company’s coding work.
In short, the very companies that once led a hiring boom to secure programming talent are now making room for AI.
Kim Jin-young, a professor of economics at Korea University, describes the shift as deeply ironic. “Some programmers are rewarded in proportion to how much they use AI tools,” he said. “It creates a system where people work harder to build the weapon that could replace them.”
Still, he cautions against overestimating the speed of disruption. “There is an assumption that AI can quickly replace labor, but in reality there are many hurdles to overcome, and that transition is likely to take considerable time,” he said.
The scale of the shift is already visible. According to Crunchbase News, about 127,000 jobs were cut at U.S.-based technology companies in 2025, following 95,667 in 2024 and more than 191,000 in 2023.
Among individual firms, Intel recorded the largest cuts in 2025 with more than 27,000 job losses, followed by Microsoft, Verizon and Amazon.
The clearest signs of strain are emerging at the entry level.
A 2023 study by GitHub and Microsoft found developers using GitHub Copilot completed coding tasks 55.8 percent faster on average, raising concerns that generative AI is absorbing routine work — coding, debugging, testing and documentation — traditionally assigned to junior engineers.
The so-called “entry-level squeeze” is already evident in the United States. According to reporting by The Washington Post, computer programming jobs fell 27.5 percent over two years, while software developer employment remained largely flat.
By 2025 and into 2026, major tech firms including Google and Meta have scaled back aggressive new-graduate hiring, shifting focus toward experienced engineers who can leverage AI tools more effectively.
South Korea is showing similar signs.
According to the Ministry of Data and Statistics, employment in professional, scientific and technical services fell by 105,000 on year to 1.373 million last month — the sharpest decline since the industrial classification system was revised in 2017. Employment in information and communications also dropped by 42,000, marking a second straight monthly decline.
The impact is particularly acute among younger workers. Employment among people in their 20s fell by 163,000 to 3.262 million, the lowest level since records began in 1982 — the only age group to post a decline.
Job placement data for computer science graduates tell a similar story. Placement rates have dropped across major universities, including Seoul National University, KAIST and Hanyang University.
The shift is also reflected in hiring demand. According to the Korea Labor Institute, the share of entry-level openings in software developer job postings fell to 37.4 percent in 2024 from 53.5 percent in 2022.
This coincides with the rapid adoption of generative AI. A survey by McKinsey & Company found the share of companies using generative AI in at least one business function jumped to 65 percent in 2024 from 33 percent a year earlier.
As AI becomes standard in the workplace, companies are increasingly favoring experienced workers who can deploy these tools effectively, rather than hiring juniors for repetitive tasks.
That does not mean software development is disappearing. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment for software developers will grow 15 percent from 2024 to 2034.
Rather, the nature of the work is shifting. Demand is weakening for routine coding, while rising for higher-skilled developers who can design systems, validate models and integrate AI into products.
International institutions point in the same direction. The International Monetary Fund estimates about 40 percent of global employment — and up to 60 percent in advanced economies — is exposed to AI, while the World Economic Forum projects the technology could create 11 million jobs by 2030 while displacing 9 million.
The implication is less about wholesale job destruction than a reconfiguration of work — unbundling tasks, automating some, and raising the value of others.
Kim Geun-tae, a professor of public sociology at Korea University, says education must adapt accordingly. “Computer science students should also be taking humanities and social science courses,” he said, noting that future competitiveness will hinge on combining technical skills with human judgment.
He pointed to renewed interest in philosophy departments at top universities as employers place greater value on reasoning, ethics and interpretive skills that are harder to automate.
Even hiring practices are evolving. Companies such as KT Corporation are incorporating AI-assisted problem-solving into recruitment, asking applicants to use AI tools during interviews.
Yet the two professors agree the current correction does not signal the end of human labor.
“The essential things are not easily replaced,” Kim said.
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