LOCALIZE IT: As coding boom fades, computer science grads focus on AI skills in choppy job market

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A computer science degree was once considered one of the safest career bets during the coding boom, but few other disciplines have been hit harder by the emergence of artificial intelligence and other strains on the job market for young workers.

During the heyday, college students majoring in computer science started getting job offers as sophomores and juniors without even applying. Now students frequently send out out hundreds of applications without getting job offers.

Generation X and elder Millennial programmers, meanwhile, aren’t experiencing nearly the same struggles, research shows. What the industry is demanding now is workers who can oversee AI tools and not blindly accept their outputs — skills more common in seasoned workers, experts in the field said.

But all hope isn’t lost, computer science department leaders say. They say most of their graduates ultimately are getting jobs, although increasingly, the companies hiring aren’t tech giants but smaller businesses looking for help figuring out what to do with AI.

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As the coding boom fades, computer science grads focus on AI skills in choppy job market

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SOURCES FOR DATA

— Job postings dip: Computer science hiring boomed during the pandemic as everything went digital, with software development postings on the job search site Indeed peaking in early 2022. Today, around 70% fewer software development jobs are posted, according to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis ′ analysis.

— Unemployment of new computer science and engineering graduates: Among 74 majors tracked, computer engineering has the second highest unemployment rate of recent graduates at 7.8%, and computer science has the fifth highest at 7%, according to this year’s Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s analysis of 2024 data.

— Information sector dips: All industries have grown since 2019, except for the information sector, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of Bureau of Labor statistics. It’s down 8.5% since 2023.

— Enrollment dips: Computer and information science enrollment dropped in the spring, falling by 8.4% at four-year institutions and by 11.2% at two-year institutions, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found in a June report.

— Some college dips were large: The Computing Research Association, surveyed college computer science department officials last fall. The enrollment at some schools with large applicant pools held steady. But 8% of schools reported enrollment declines of 30% or greater.

— Young people hit hardest: Stanford University researchers grouped occupations based on how easy it is for AI to do or help with key tasks. The most “AI exposed” occupations included software developers and computer and information system managers, along with customer service representatives, accountants, human resource specialists and more. Among 22- to 25-year-old workers, employment is 19% below where it would be if it had kept pace with employment among similarly aged workers in less-exposed occupations. But among experienced workers, there is no comparable gap, according to the Stanford Digital Economy Lab’s latest update report, “Canaries in the Coal Mine,” which relied on data from payroll processing giant ADP. For software developers, in particular, the number of 41- to 49-year-old workers continues to rise. But for the youngest 22- to 25-year-old workers it began falling in late 2022.

— Other possible causes: Standard researchers tried to determine whether something besides AI could have caused the shift. Did firms overhire tech workers during the pandemic? (Enrollment in computer science programs had exploded prior to the recent drop.) Did interest rate increases designed to combat inflation increase borrowing costs for businesses so much that they stopped hiring? Did the pandemic-era shift to online schooling harm young workers learning so much that they are having a hard time in the job market as a result? Are companies that have shifted to remote work avoiding young workers because they are hard to mentor online? (A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggested that was a possibility.) But none of those explanations fully explained the gap found in the payroll data, said Bharat Chandar, a postdoctoral researcher at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

— State, regional differences in AI usage, worker impacts: Where you live makes a difference, too. Coastal states are the most affected and midwestern and southern states the least affected by the hiring changes, Stanford found. One possible reason is geographic difference in the use of AI. For instance, Washington, D.C., and California are the biggest Claude users, according to Anthropic's Economic Index , which tracks AI usage.

— More job postings list AI skills: Postings for jobs that included AI and machine learnings in the title are up 173% year over year, according to Dice, a specialized online job board and career marketplace dedicated exclusively to technology and engineering professionals. And the Bipartisan Policy Center’s AI and Workforce Navigator , which includes data from employment analytics firm Lightcast, found that the phenomenon isn’t isolated to just the computing industry. The accounting, banking and job placement industry also are demanding AI skills at growing rates in job postings.

— International students: International students were awarded 8.2% of computer and information sciences degrees in 2024, according to the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators report . And at the graduate level, 79.7% of computer science graduate students were international as recently as 2023, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan public policy research organization focusing on trade and immigration. Since then, international enrollment has fallen, particularly among graduate students, the latest National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data show.

CONSIDER THESE REPORTING THREADS

— Find a computer science student struggling to find work. Ask them how many applications they have sent out? Were they interviewed by AI bots? Did they ultimately find work? What was the industry? Does their job involve AI? What was their experience using AI in school? Were they encouraged to use it? Were they barred from using it? Would they major in computer science if they could redo college?

— Talk to college computer science departments. Are applications for the program up or down? Have they started specific AI programs? How are they changing their curriculum to address AI? How are they helping seniors and recent graduates look for jobs? Are they recruiting different types of employers to job fairs?

— Talk to local employers. What do they need from young graduates, particularly in fields like computer science? Do they need different skills from entry-level workers now compared to five years ago? Have they slowed internship hiring? When they do hire new graduates, are they asking them to work with AI? Do they see the reduced competition from tech giants as an opportunity to bring tech services back in house? Are colleges doing a good job preparing students for the jobs of today? If not, what needs to change?

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