Tech hiring collapsed. What signals are on the horizon?

The experienced AI programmer needed another beer. 

I was at a book agency party over the weekend. A friend introduced me to the programmer, who spent decades working on machine learning and what is now called artificial intelligence to make the bosses and investors happy. He had been in demand his whole career — until he was laid off last June. He hasn’t found work since. 

I’ve had at least a dozen other conversations like it over the last two years. 

The data tell the tale. Cheap-money fueled a pandemic-era digital demand bonanza. Tech employers over hired. We’ve had a bad hangover ever since. That hangover has overlapped with enough economic uncertainty and rising adoption of AI developer tools that some worry a fundamental shift has happened to tech employment. Many employers got comfortable hiring cheaper labor abroad.

Information jobs, the industry that includes most software makers, were lower last month than at any point since the spring 2020 economic collapse, according to the latest Census data. In February, IT unemployment hit 5.7%, per an analysis, more than a third higher than the national average.

The Trump administration’s tariffs and federal workforce shakeup has bred volatility and shed thousands of STEM workers. State budgets and arcane changes to the federal tax code are contributing headwinds. The post-pandemic period has proved a fine time to have a tech job, as salaries remain high. But put it all together and after a career-long boom time in tech employment, this is one of the worst times ever to look for one.

In both 2022 and 2023, 1 in 4 of all US layoffs was in the tech industry, per an industry report. Last year, it was 1 in 5. Nevermind the crushing 2000-2001 dot com bubble or the 2008-2009 Great Recession. Dismally, each of the last three years would have been tech’s highest share of employment in modern history.

Nationally, the number of software developer jobs posted to career-site giant Indeed is still falling, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis — down 8.5% year over year in January, long after the steepest fall from the frothy swan song of the pandemic digital boom. Regionally, there’s no consistent story. In Atlanta, Denver and even Baltimore, the number of tech job postings in 2025 is running above where they were in 2024, according to a Technical.ly analysis of Lightcast data. In contrast, the total in the Washington DC region has taken a nose dive in recent weeks. In Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the trend is downward too.

We’ve been here before. Last spring, Technical.ly hosted its long-running annual tech jobs fair — more than 500 attendees but barely a dozen tech employers, a quarter of the number of years prior.

An attendee confronted me afterward to gruffly lodge his disappointment, and wasn’t all that interested that after a decade of hosting the event, we recognized the change was macroeconomic. A Technical.ly analysis from then projected better days ahead.

Though the signals are warmer than a year prior, they still don’t look sunny. This spring, with the 15th annual Philly Tech Week looming, we aren’t hosting the tech jobs fair at all — for the first time in a decade.

I said as much to the AI programmer this weekend. I did invite him to our Developers Conference, which has always been more focused on professional development than recruiting. Registration for the half-day conference looks great. But I warned him that we expect fewer employers with open roles to be on site than ever before.