programmer employment

Fed Study: Programmer Employment Dropped 50% After ChatGPT Launch

Federal Reserve economists Leland D. Crane and Paul E. Soto found that U.S. programmer employment growth dropped roughly 50% after ChatGPT launched in November 2022. Before AI, programming jobs grew at ~5% annually; since then, growth has flatlined in IT services and software development sectors. The study estimates ~500,000 jobs that would likely exist without LLMs, though wages haven't declined—only headcount has been affected. This is the first Fed-level research directly linking AI to occupation-specific hiring declines.