Goodbye, $212,000 tech jobs: US grad coders scrambling for other work

SAN FRANCISCO – Since the early 2010s, a parade of billionaires, tech executives and even US presidents has urged young people to learn coding, arguing that the tech skills would help bolster students’ job prospects as well as the economy. Tech companies promised computer science graduates high salaries and all manner of perks.

The graduates’ starting salary is typically “more than US$100,000 (S$128,500)” plus US$15,000 hiring bonuses and stock grants worth US$50,000, Mr Brad Smith, a top Microsoft executive, said in 2012 as he kicked off a company campaign to get more high schools to teach computing.

The financial incentives, plus the chance to work on popular apps, quickly fed a boom in computer science education, the study of computer programming and processes like algorithms.

In 2024, the number of undergraduates majoring in the field topped 170,000 in the United States – more than double the number in 2014, according to the Computing Research Association, a non-profit.

But, now, the

spread of artificial intelligence (AI) programming tools

, which can quickly generate thousands of lines of computer code – combined with layoffs at companies like Amazon, Intel, Meta and Microsoft – is dimming prospects in a field that technology leaders promoted for years.

The turnabout is derailing the employment dreams of many new computing grads and sending them scrambling for other work.

Among college graduates aged 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates – 6.1 per cent and 7.5 per cent, respectively, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

This is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3 per cent.

In response to questions from The New York Times, more than 150 college students and recent graduates – from state schools, as well as private universities – shared their experiences. Some said they had applied to hundreds, and in several cases thousands, of tech jobs at companies, non-profits and government agencies.

Prominent computing education boosters are now pivoting to AI.

US President Donald Trump, who in 2017 directed federal funding towards computer science in schools, recently unveiled a national AI action plan that includes channelling more students into AI jobs.

Microsoft, a major computing education sponsor, recently said it would provide US$4 billion in technology and funding for AI training for students and workers.

In July, Mr Smith said the company was also assessing how AI was changing computer science education. NYTIMES