Software Developer Employment Statistics: 1.7 Million U.S. Jobs

The core occupation is Software Developers, SOC 15-1252. BLS defines the occupation as people who research, design, and develop computer and network software or specialized utility programs, analyze user needs, develop software solutions, and update or enhance existing software.

The detailed geographic tables use BLS May 2023 OEWS estimates. Those estimates include employment, employment per thousand jobs, location quotient, and mean wages. They are employer survey estimates, not counts of LinkedIn profiles, job postings, or people who happen to describe themselves as programmers.

The national outlook uses the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook and the BLS Employment Projections program. Those sources put software developer employment at 1,693,800 in 2024 and project it to reach 1,961,400 in 2034.

A location quotient needs a quick explanation. A quotient of 1.00 means an occupation has the same share of local employment as it does nationally. A quotient of 2.00 means the occupation is twice as concentrated locally. This makes location quotient more useful than raw headcount when comparing a huge state with a smaller one.

Mean pay and median pay are also different. The May 2023 geographic tables report mean wages. The May 2024 national pay section reports median wages. Mean is the arithmetic average. Median is the midpoint. This page labels both instead of pretending they are interchangeable.

Finally, employment estimates are not job openings. A market can employ many developers while creating relatively few new roles, and a smaller market can grow quickly from a low base. Use these figures to understand the structure of the market, then combine them with current postings and your own target-company research.

The cleanest national baseline comes from BLS. Software developers held about 1.7 million jobs in 2024. The precise employment projection baseline is 1,693,800. That makes software development a large occupation, not a tiny elite niche.

The pay distribution is equally important. The national median annual wage was $133,080 in May 2024. The bottom 10% earned less than $79,850, while the top 10% earned more than $211,450. Those figures show why a single average salary is never enough to describe this market. The spread between the lower and upper ends exceeds $131,000.

That 16% occupation-specific growth rate is more than five times the 3% average BLS cites for all occupations. The broader group of software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers is projected to grow 15%, with about 129,200 openings per year on average. The annual openings figure includes new jobs and replacement needs when workers change occupations or leave the labor force.

The takeaway is not that every developer will have an easy time. National growth can coexist with brutal entry-level competition and uneven hiring. The takeaway is that the occupation itself remains structurally large and is projected to expand.

Raw employment tells you where the biggest pools of software talent are. In May 2023, California was in a category of its own with 304,390 software developers. Texas followed at 138,510, and New York ranked third at 105,460.

California employed more developers than Texas and New York combined. That is a staggering amount of market gravity. It helps explain why the state can keep producing companies, specialized communities, and job-switching opportunities even through down cycles.

Texas is the more interesting cautionary case. It has the second-highest raw employment, but its 0.94 location quotient is slightly below the national concentration. Texas has a massive developer market partly because Texas has a massive overall labor market. Big does not automatically mean specialized.

Washington and Virginia tell the opposite story. Neither matches California's raw headcount, but both have unusually dense developer employment. In career terms, density can matter more than size because it signals how central software work is to the local economy.

Washington ranked first in state concentration with 25.49 software developers per 1,000 jobs and a location quotient of 2.34. Put simply, software developer employment was 2.34 times as concentrated in Washington as in the nation.

Washington's position reflects the enormous influence of the Seattle ecosystem. Virginia's concentration reflects a different mix: federal contracting, defense, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, and the Washington, D.C. metro.

Massachusetts and Colorado also deserve attention. They combine meaningful employment with a concentration about 50% above the national level. That usually means the local market is deep enough to support specialist employers, meetups, recruiters, and career paths beyond one dominant company.

Use concentration as a resilience signal, not a guarantee. A highly concentrated market can offer more opportunities, but it can also absorb more damage when its dominant sector cuts hiring. The best position is often a dense market with a diverse employer base.

State data can hide the actual clusters. Metro data shows where developers physically pile up.

New York wins on raw headcount, but San Jose wins on specialization by an absurd margin. San Jose's 7.75 location quotient means software development was 7.75 times as concentrated there as it was nationally. Nearly 85 of every 1,000 jobs were software developer jobs.

Los Angeles and Chicago demonstrate why you need both columns. Each has tens of thousands of developers, but each has a location quotient below 1.00. They are huge, diversified economies where software development is important without dominating the local job structure.

Dallas and Atlanta sit in an attractive middle ground. They offer large developer pools, above-average concentration, and employer bases that extend beyond pure technology companies. That diversity can be valuable when product companies freeze hiring but finance, healthcare, logistics, or consulting keeps moving.

The concentration ranking reveals several markets that raw headcount misses.

Huntsville is the sleeper result. It employed only 7,270 developers, but its concentration was 2.65 times the national rate. Aerospace, defense, and government work create a technical market that is much denser than the city's size suggests.

Raleigh and Durham appear separately in BLS metro data, yet both exceed a 2.00 location quotient. Treat the Research Triangle as one broader career ecosystem and the opportunity becomes more obvious. Universities, enterprise technology, life sciences, and established employers create a market with several ways in.

Boulder has elite concentration and mean pay, but only 7,840 developer jobs. That can be excellent if your skills match the market and risky if you need endless employer choice. Density and depth are related, but they are not identical.

Software developers do not only work at software companies. In fact, the largest employer category is computer systems design and related services, which includes a huge consulting and services ecosystem.

The 2024 Occupational Outlook Handbook gives a broader employer-share view. It says computer systems design and related services employed 30% of software developers, finance and insurance employed 10%, software publishers 9%, manufacturing 8%, and management of companies and enterprises 5%.

That should permanently kill the idea that a developer job search begins and ends with famous technology companies. Finance and insurance alone account for roughly one in ten developer jobs in the BLS distribution. Manufacturing accounts for nearly another one in twelve. Every serious business is becoming a software business, but the job titles still sit inside the employer's original industry.

This changes your strategy. If every applicant is chasing the same consumer app companies, look at industrial automation, insurance platforms, logistics, cybersecurity, healthcare systems, and infrastructure providers. The work may be less glamorous on social media and more useful to your bank account.

The May 2024 BLS median wage table shows a meaningful spread across major employing industries.

Software publishers led this group at $149,990, about $20,100 above computer systems design and related services. That gap is not proof that every product company beats every consulting employer. It is a national industry median. But it does show that employer business model has a measurable relationship with compensation.

The May 2023 OEWS top-paying industry table goes even further. Web search portals, libraries, archives, and other information services reported a mean annual wage of $215,840 for 44,730 developers. Media streaming, social networks, and related content providers averaged $180,570 for 26,220 developers. Computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing averaged $179,480 for 26,230.

Those categories can contain a small number of extremely high-paying firms, so do not treat them as promises. Treat them as a clue. Companies where software directly creates revenue or protects a massive revenue engine often have more room to pay than companies where engineering is treated as a support cost.

Data becomes valuable when it changes what you do. Here is the practical reading.

First, optimize for employer density, not just one offer. A great job in a thin market can become a trap if the company changes direction. A market with several credible employers gives you negotiation leverage and a safer exit.

Second, separate size from specialization. New York has more developers than San Jose, but San Jose's software concentration is nearly seven times higher. Texas has the second-largest state headcount, yet its concentration sits slightly below the national rate. Ask what kind of market serves your goals.

Third, look beyond companies that sell software. The 2024 employer shares show 10% of developers in finance and insurance and 8% in manufacturing. A developer who understands payments, risk, supply chains, embedded systems, or industrial operations can build a moat that a generic framework résumé cannot.

Fourth, use smaller clusters intelligently. Huntsville, Raleigh, Durham, Provo, and Boulder all appear in the high-concentration metro list. A smaller cluster can offer a lower-noise network and strong domain specialization. Just verify that it has enough employers for your risk tolerance.

Fifth, remember that remote work changes access, not geography. Remote jobs can let you participate in an employer market without moving, but companies, capital, and professional networks still cluster. Geography has not vanished. It has become one variable in a more flexible equation.

Sixth, build proof that travels. If you want access to a different market, a public body of work is your passport. Shipped products, useful open-source contributions, technical writing, measurable business results, and strong referrals travel farther than a résumé full of responsibilities.

The loudest online conversation is usually about whether software engineering is dead. The BLS projection says the occupation is expected to add 267,700 jobs from 2024 to 2034. The smarter question is where that growth will concentrate and whether you are positioning yourself near the problems employers will pay to solve.

Start with a market map, not a pile of random applications. Choose a state or metro, then build a list of at least 30 employers that plausibly hire developers with your experience. Group them by industry, company size, and business model. This quickly shows whether you are looking at a real ecosystem or one famous employer surrounded by wishful thinking.

Next, compare raw employment with concentration. A huge market offers more total seats. A concentrated market makes software more central to the local economy. Neither automatically wins. Early-career developers often benefit from a deep market with many potential mentors and employers. Senior specialists may prefer a smaller cluster that pays a premium for their domain.

Then examine industry mix. A metro dominated by one sector can be excellent when that sector is expanding and painful when it contracts. A diversified city may offer smoother demand across finance, healthcare, manufacturing, consulting, government, and product companies. The BLS metro total will not reveal that mix by itself, so inspect employer lists and current postings.

Run a skills test against those employers. Collect 50 relevant job descriptions and count recurring technologies, domain terms, and seniority requirements. Ignore the exotic item that appears once. Pay attention to the capabilities that show up again and again. Those repetitions are the market telling you what it buys.

Talk to five people who already work in the market. Ask which companies train juniors, which teams hire specialists, which employers use contractors as a pipeline, and which job titles hide genuine software work. Employment statistics give you the aerial view. Conversations reveal the streets.

Finally, treat geography as a portfolio decision. You are not choosing a city forever. You are choosing the environment that best supports your next stage. A dense hub may accelerate your first five years. Later, a remote role or smaller specialist cluster may offer better economics and quality of life. The smartest career plan changes as your proof, network, and priorities change.

Do not forget the downside scenario. Ask what happens if your target employer freezes hiring six months after you arrive. Can you name ten alternatives without changing industries? Can your skills transfer to a neighboring market? A location with one perfect company is not necessarily safer than a location with twenty good ones.

This is the real use of employment data. It does not choose for you. It helps you avoid building a career on assumptions that collapse the moment one company says no.

No employment dataset is a live market ticker. The detailed state, metro, and industry tables on this page are May 2023 estimates. The national employment, pay, and projection figures are newer and use 2024 as their base. Layoffs, hiring cycles, company relocations, and remote-work policies can change local conditions after a survey reference date.

OEWS estimates also cover wage and salary employment. They are not a complete count of self-employed freelancers, founders, or every contractor paid through a nontraditional structure. Job titles can also vary. Some people doing software development may be classified under adjacent occupations, while some employees with developer titles may do a broader mix of work.

Location quotient measures concentration, not quality of life, current openings, housing affordability, or the odds that a specific employer will hire you. It belongs in a decision model alongside salary, cost of living, employer diversity, personal network, specialization, and family priorities.

You are welcome to cite this resource in an article, report, classroom presentation, or hiring-market analysis. Link to this page for the synthesis and to the original BLS table for the underlying statistic. Include the reference year. A number without its year is an argument waiting to go wrong.

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2023: Software Developers. National, industry, state, metro, concentration, and wage estimates for SOC 15-1252.
• BLS May 2023 State Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates. State methodology and detailed occupation tables.
• BLS May 2023 Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Area Estimates. Metro and nonmetro employment tables.
• BLS May 2023 National Industry-Specific Estimates. Employment and wage estimates by industry.
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers. 2024 employment, May 2024 pay, employer shares, annual openings, and 2024-2034 outlook.
• BLS Employment Projections National Employment Matrix. 2024 baseline and 2034 projection for SOC 15-1252.