Employment of software developers aged 22 to 25 has dropped by about 20 percent from its late-2022 peak, according to a Stanford University Digital Economy Lab study of payroll records, coinciding with the arrival of ChatGPT and a wave of AI-assisted coding tools.
Separate research from the Linux Foundation found entry-level roles bearing the brunt of AI-driven hiring cuts.
Yet the premise that developers are merely coders is a flawed one, the data suggests. A study of Microsoft engineers by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers found that writing and reading code occupies just 15 percent of a developer's workday, with the remainder spent on collaboration, planning, review and testing.
AI-generated code has also proven far from turnkey.
In the 2025 State of Web Development AI survey, 76 percent of developers said they rewrite more than half of the code the tools produce, citing verification and error detection as their toughest challenges.
Trimming junior ranks carries a hidden cost, as senior engineers absorb the maintenance and oversight that juniors once handled.
Engineering-intelligence firm Jellyfish found that 46 percent of engineering managers expect developer burnout to worsen as a result, while the average COBOL specialist — a scarce, legacy skill — now commands about $115,000 a year, a sign of how thinning supply drives compensation higher.
Analysts argue the remedy is to elevate junior roles rather than eliminate them, shifting new hires toward testing, validation and system-level judgment while handing them explicit ownership of reviewing AI output.
Cheaper AI-enabled prototyping, they add, makes junior-led "tiny teams" a fast route from raw productivity to business results.
"Slowing junior-level hiring could lead to significant pitfalls, including inhibiting knowledge transfer, restricting the internal talent pipeline, and limiting recruitment to more expensive and competitive senior roles," said Aliyah Camacho, a principal analyst at Gartner.
The firm predicts that by 2028, organizations relying on AI to cut junior roles will hollow out their own software engineering talent pipeline, ultimately stalling the innovation those cuts were meant to accelerate.
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