Source
Gergely Orosz (2025), “Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?”, The Pragmatic Engineer blog, LIT-089, read in full in NOTE-039. The finding rests on NOTE-039’s check against Indeed Hiring Lab’s job postings tracker (github.com/hiring-lab/job_postings_tracker, data to 2026-09-18), which FRED republishes. The primary series is not held as a LIT.
What was actually shown
The index. Hiring Lab’s index is the percentage change in seasonally adjusted active postings since 1 February 2020, as a seven-day trailing average. It counts postings on Indeed.
The swing. US software-development postings peaked at 233.8 on 2022-02-28 and were still 228 in May 2022. On 2025-02-13 they stood at 65.2: a 3.59× fall from the peak and −8.3% year on year, against all postings at 109.5. Those are the post’s 65%, “3.5x” and −8%.
Against other sectors. Software development had the largest peak-to- February-2025 fall (next, Data & Analytics, 3.07×) and the lowest level. Its boom was not unique: Human Resources (243.3), Logistic Support, Accounting, Civil Engineering, Data & Analytics and Production & Manufacturing all peaked above 200, above Banking & Finance’s 190.2. The post’s claim that only banking came close holds only among the four sectors it charted.
Other countries, same date. Canada 73.6, Great Britain 55.5, France 68.9, Germany 66.7, Australia 111.7. Only Australia is above baseline, as the post says.
What could have come out otherwise. The headline figures could have failed to reproduce from the source data. They reproduce to within rounding; several of the post’s sector figures do not (hospitality −18% against −7.0%).
What this does not say
- That openings, vacancies or hiring fell by these amounts. The post uses those words interchangeably. The index is postings on one site, and the author himself doubts its coverage of Big Tech and startups.
- Why it fell. The post ranks interest rates first, over-hiring second and GenAI as a hedged “wait and see”; none of this is analysed. Its argument that Section 174 cannot explain the 2022 drop rests on dating the rule to 2023, which NOTE-039 believes is wrong (tax years after 2021, from background knowledge, unverified); the cross-country argument stands either way.
- Where it stands now. In the current vintage US software-development postings were 77.3 on 2026-09-18, against all postings at 103.5. The figures above may differ slightly from the February 2025 vintage the author saw, since the series is re-adjusted weekly.
- Anything about AI’s effect on labour. NOTE-039 says the post’s AI-labour remarks are speculation and should not be cited as evidence.