Software Engineer Unemployment Statistics 2026: 32 Data Points on Hiring, Underemployment, and Recovery

• 6.992%: unemployment rate for computer science majors, according to New York Fed outcomes-by-major data.
• 7.783%: unemployment rate for computer engineering majors, even higher than computer science.
• 19.127%: underemployment rate for computer science majors, meaning many grads are working below degree level.
• 5.563%: unemployment rate for recent college graduates overall in the latest New York Fed time-series data (December 2025).
• 42.473%: underemployment rate for recent college graduates overall in the latest New York Fed time-series data.
• 3.059%: unemployment rate for all college graduates in the same New York Fed release, far below recent graduates.
• 4.249%: unemployment rate for all workers in the same New York Fed release.
• 2.0%: tech unemployment rate in December 2024, according to CompTIA's January 2025 Tech Jobs report.
• 2.8%: tech unemployment rate in June 2025, still below the national rate, according to CompTIA.
• 73.08: current Indeed software development job-posting index reading on FRED as of April 24, 2026, down from a base of 100 in February 2020.
• 26.9%: decline in software development job postings versus the February 2020 baseline, based on FRED/Indeed data.
• 68.8%: decline in software development job postings versus the February 2022 peak, based on FRED/Indeed data.
• 15%: projected growth in software developer, QA analyst, and tester employment from 2024 to 2034, according to BLS.
• 129,200: average annual openings projected by BLS for software developers, QA analysts, and testers over the decade.
• $133,080: median annual wage for software developers in May 2024, according to BLS.

If you want to understand why the software engineering market feels so hostile right now, start with recent graduates.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York data shows computer science majors at 6.992% unemployment and computer engineering majors at 7.783%. That is not a rounding-error difference from the broader workforce. It is a real warning sign for people entering the market with little or no experience.

The same New York Fed major-level dataset shows computer science underemployment at 19.127% and computer engineering underemployment at 15.835%. In plain English, a meaningful slice of technically trained graduates are either unemployed or working in roles that do not normally require their degree.

That fits with the broader recent-graduate picture. In the latest New York Fed time series for December 2025, recent college graduates overall had 5.563% unemployment and 42.473% underemployment. Compare that with 3.059% unemployment for all college graduates and 4.249% for all workers. Young people entering the labor market are carrying more of the shock.

SignalFire's 2025 State of Tech Talent report gives the hiring-side explanation. Their dataset, built from more than 650 million professionals and 80 million organizations, found that new-grad hiring in Big Tech is down more than 50% from 2019 levels. New grads now account for just 7% of Big Tech hires, while startup new grads make up under 6% of hires. That is not a normal entry funnel. That is a bottleneck.

This is the first big lesson from the unemployment data. When people say, "software engineering is cooked," they are usually describing the junior market. When experienced developers say, "I am still getting recruiter messages," they are describing a different market entirely.

Computer science graduates have a right to feel betrayed by the recent market narrative. For years, the conventional wisdom was simple: learn to code, get the degree, collect the job offers.

The wage data still explains why people keep choosing the major. The New York Fed outcomes table puts computer science early-career median pay at $87,000 and mid-career median pay at $120,000. Computer engineering comes in even higher at $90,000 early-career and $131,000 mid-career. BLS also reports a $133,080 median annual wage for software developers in May 2024. These are still premium jobs.

But the path into those wages has gotten much rougher. In the same New York Fed major table, 32.691% of computer science majors and 39.432% of computer engineering majors go on to earn graduate degrees. That suggests a sizable share of technically trained graduates are continuing to stack credentials, partly because the undergraduate market has become less forgiving.

SignalFire adds two more pieces of context. First, the share of new graduates landing roles at the Magnificent Seven has dropped by more than half since 2022. Second, startups are operating with less slack. Carta data cited in SignalFire's report shows Series A startups are 20% smaller than they were in 2020. Smaller teams mean fewer apprenticeship-style seats for people who still need coaching.

So the whiplash is real. The long-term compensation case for software engineering remains strong. The short-term landing zone for new graduates is far tighter than it was during the zero-interest-rate hiring spree. Both statements are true, and ignoring either one leads to bad career advice.

Unemployment data tells you how people are doing now. Job-posting data tells you how much oxygen is entering the system. Right now, that oxygen level is still well below the boom years.

According to the Indeed software development job-postings index on FRED, the series sat at 100.00 on February 1, 2020. It later exploded to a peak of 233.93 on February 28, 2022. As of April 24, 2026, the index was down to 73.08.

That means software development postings are now 26.9% below the pre-pandemic baseline and 68.8% below the 2022 peak. The market is not merely cooling from an overheated high. It is operating below the reference point many people think of as normal.

The trough in this series fell to 61.10 on May 17, 2025, so the market has improved from its weakest point. But improving from a weak point is not the same thing as being healthy. If you graduated into this market, you are competing in a smaller pool of open roles than graduates saw even before the pandemic hiring surge.

That also explains why application counts have become absurd. When there are fewer genuinely entry-level openings and many companies quietly backfill junior roles with more experienced engineers, candidates have to spray more applications just to maintain the same probability of landing an interview.

Now for the other half of the story. The same economy that is rough on recent graduates is still unusually favorable to many established tech workers.

CompTIA's monthly Tech Jobs reports show the tech unemployment rate at 2.0% in December 2024, then 2.9% in January 2025, and 2.8% in June 2025. In each case, tech unemployment remained below the national unemployment rate. January's national rate was 4.0%. June's tech unemployment followed a prior month of 3.4%, meaning the rate actually improved as companies added workers.

CompTIA also reported that the core tech workforce totaled nearly 6.5 million workers in its January 2025 release. In June 2025, the organization estimated net new tech occupation growth of 90,000 workers for the month. The point is not that every engineer had an easy time. The point is that the overall technical labor market remained materially stronger than the graduate market.

SignalFire describes this as an experience paradox. Companies still want technical output, but they want it from people who can contribute quickly. That pushes demand toward mid-level and senior engineers while shrinking the training appetite for juniors.

If you are already proven, the unemployment numbers are still relatively kind. If you are trying to become proven, the market is forcing you to clear a much higher bar.

One mistake people make with unemployment statistics is reading them like an obituary. Lower postings and higher graduate unemployment do not mean hiring disappeared. They mean hiring became selective.

CompTIA reported 434,415 active tech job postings in December 2024, including 165,189 newly added that month. In January 2025, active postings rose to more than 476,000, with 51,756 new employer listings added. By June 2025, active tech job listings stood at 455,341, and 211,924 of them were newly added during the month.

Demand in June was strongest for software developers and engineers, systems engineers and architects, tech support specialists, cybersecurity engineers and architects, and network engineers and architects, according to CompTIA. So yes, employers are still opening roles. They are just not opening them with the same beginner-friendly posture they had in 2021 and early 2022.

Another important signal is credential flexibility. CompTIA found that 45% to nearly 50% of tech postings did not specify a four-year degree requirement in the releases we reviewed. That sounds like good news, and in some ways it is. But it also means employers are widening the top of the funnel while still screening hard for usable skills. Dropping the degree requirement does not automatically make a role junior-friendly.

The experience mix confirms that point. In CompTIA's June 2025 release, 21% of open positions targeted 0 to 3 years of experience, 30% targeted 4 to 7 years, and 17% targeted 8 or more years. There are still early-career openings, but they are not the center of gravity.

This is where the doom narrative overreaches. The short-term software engineering market is tough. The long-term software engineering market is still strong by almost any mainstream labor metric.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says employment for software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers is projected to grow 15% from 2024 to 2034. That is much faster than the average for all occupations. BLS also projects 129,200 openings per year on average over the decade.

CompTIA's State of the Tech Workforce 2025 reaches a similar conclusion at the broader occupation level. It says tech occupation employment is expected to grow at roughly 2 times the rate of overall employment, while the replacement rate for tech occupations should average about 6% annually, or roughly 352,000 workers each year, during the 2024 to 2034 period.

That matters because software engineering unemployment statistics are easiest to misread when you ignore time horizon. A weak current market can coexist with a favorable ten-year outlook. That is exactly what the data shows today.

If you are planning a career, this should change how you think. You do not need to conclude that software engineering is a bad field. You need to conclude that the entry strategy matters more than it used to. The people who win now tend to arrive with internships, shipped projects, open-source proof, domain specialization, or unusually strong networking. The days when a generic resume and a CS degree were enough are fading fast.

Let me translate the data into plain English.

First, the unemployment problem is asymmetric. Computer science and computer engineering graduates are taking much more damage than established tech workers. If you argue about "the market" without splitting junior from experienced talent, you will keep reaching bad conclusions.

Second, underemployment matters almost as much as unemployment. A 19.127% underemployment rate for computer science majors and a 42.473% underemployment rate for recent graduates overall mean a lot of smart people are working below their potential, not just sitting completely jobless. That drags morale, slows skill growth, and delays wage progression.

Third, postings are still the missing bridge. The FRED/Indeed series at 73.08 tells you the recovery is incomplete. If postings were back near the baseline, graduate pain would ease faster. Until that happens, competition stays nasty.

Fourth, long-term demand has not vanished. The BLS 15% growth forecast, the 129,200 annual openings, and CompTIA's broader workforce projections all argue against the idea that software work itself is disappearing. The profession still has a future. The ramp into it is what changed.

Fifth, skill proof beats credential comfort. Employers are still hiring. They are just less interested in potential and more interested in evidence. In a market like this, a portfolio, an internship, a niche skill stack, or a track record with AI-assisted development can matter more than another round of vague resume polishing.

If you are already in the industry, these numbers are a reminder not to get complacent. If you are trying to break in, they are a reminder not to take rejection personally. A harder market does not mean you are bad. It means you need a sharper strategy than people needed a few years ago.

Another useful way to read software engineer unemployment statistics is relative, not absolute. A 6.992% unemployment rate for computer science majors is not catastrophic in the abstract. It becomes significant when you compare it with what people expected from the major and what other graduate groups are seeing.

The latest New York Fed time-series data shows recent graduates overall at 5.563% unemployment. That means computer science is running about 1.4 percentage points above the overall recent-graduate rate. Computer engineering is roughly 2.2 points above. Those gaps matter because these are supposed to be premium, technical, job-ready majors.

The underemployment gap matters even more. Recent graduates overall sit at 42.473% underemployment, while computer science comes in much lower at 19.127%. At first glance, that sounds comforting. But it actually reinforces the split. Computer science graduates are less likely than the average graduate to end up in clearly non-degree work, yet they are still showing elevated outright unemployment. In other words, the market is not merely pushing them into random office jobs. It is rejecting a meaningful share of them at the door.

That distinction matters for interpreting the mood online. If you spend time in graduate forums, you will see people treating all weak outcomes as equivalent. They are not. Some majors produce lower pay but easier absorption into generic white-collar roles. Software engineering and computer science still retain wage power, but the jobs themselves have become harder to access at the front end.

The pay spread illustrates that tension. New York Fed data puts computer science early-career pay at $87,000, versus $70,000 for mathematics and $75,000 for miscellaneous engineering in the examples we reviewed. Mid-career, computer science rises to $120,000, again ahead of those comparison majors. So the reward is still there. The launch friction is what changed.

This is why simplistic "learn to code" content now feels dated. The upside remains real, but the entrance ramp is narrower, more selective, and more dependent on proof than it was just a few years ago.

Statistics are only useful if they change behavior. So what should a junior developer, recent graduate, or career switcher actually do with this data?

Build evidence, not just knowledge. In a market where companies post junior roles and then hire stronger candidates into them, theory is not enough. Ship projects. Contribute to open source. Turn class assignments into public case studies. If an employer can see how you think, you have a better shot at escaping the "looks like every other resume" pile.

Treat AI as leverage, not a threat narrative. SignalFire is right that AI is changing hiring. CompTIA is right that employer demand now increasingly includes AI fluency. That does not mean every junior developer needs to become a model engineer. It means you should be able to show that you can use AI tools to debug, test, document, refactor, and move faster without becoming sloppy.

Aim at smaller proof loops. In a strong market, candidates can sometimes jump straight to a full-time software engineer title. In a weak junior market, that can be too binary. Contract work, QA automation, support engineering, internal tools, data-adjacent roles, apprenticeships, and freelance implementation work can all become bridges. If the data says the first rung is scarce, stop pretending the ladder only has one legal entry point.

Get geographically and commercially realistic. CompTIA's monthly reports show large posting volumes in places like Washington, New York, Dallas, San Francisco, and San Jose. That does not mean you must move. It does mean you should pay attention to where technical demand actually clusters and which industries still hire aggressively, including consulting, finance, government-adjacent work, and infrastructure-heavy businesses.

Stop personalizing macro friction. This is the emotional lesson. If software development postings are still 26.9% below the February 2020 baseline and nearly 68.8% below the 2022 peak, rejection volume is partly a market-structure problem. You still have to improve. But you do not need to invent a story that every rejection proves you are not good enough.

John Sonmez has made this point for years in a different language: careers are not won by waiting for perfect validation. They are won by compounding proof. In this market, that advice matters even more. The developers who keep shipping while everyone else doom-scroll usually end up with the opportunities once the bottleneck loosens.

• Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, plus downloadable unemployment, underemployment, and outcomes-by-major CSV data.
• FRED / Indeed Hiring Lab, Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States (series: IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE).
• CompTIA, Tech Employment Ends Year With Uptick in Hiring (January 10, 2025).
• CompTIA, Tech Employment Off to a Strong Start (February 2025 release covering January data).
• CompTIA, Tech Hiring Activity Outpaces Expectations (July 3, 2025 release covering June data).
• CompTIA, State of the Tech Workforce 2025.
• SignalFire, State of Tech Talent Report 2025.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers (growth, openings, and wage figures surfaced via BLS search results because direct automated fetches are blocked).

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