AI has torched the market for junior programmers

Stanford ADP payroll data shows US software developers aged 22-25 fell 19% from their late-2022 peak, while ages 41-49 rose 14%. After controlling for firm-level shocks, young workers in AI-automatable occupations still saw a 16% relative decline. Entry-level postings dropped 28%, and CS grads hit 6.1% unemployment—higher than liberal arts majors. Yet total developer employment rose 4.4% over the same period because juniors are only ~8% of the workforce. The BLS category 'computer programmer' (coding to spec) fell 16% in one year; data scientists grew 12%. Meanwhile, GitHub added 36M new accounts and 121M repos in a year, 80% of newcomers used Copilot in their first week, and iOS App Store submissions reversed an eight-year decline with 24% growth in 2025. The author argues the long tail of new developers arrived—they just don't use the job title. The post does not provide data beyond early 2026.

Why it matters: Hard data from Stanford Digital Economy Lab using ADP payroll, not an opinion piece. The 19% drop for juniors vs 14% gain for seniors is the most concrete quantitative evidence of AI substitution effects this year. Score not higher because the author is an individual blogger, ...