For years, the message was: learn to code, and your future is secure. It was a slogan plastered across billboards, tech blogs, and motivational TikToks. But for a growing number of recent computer science graduates, that promise is unraveling, and fast.
According to a recent labor market report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as reported by Futurism.com, unemployment among recent Computer Science grads has surged to 6.1 percent. For those who studied computer engineering, the situation is even worse, with 7.5 percent unemployed. That’s higher than the overall graduate average of 5.8 percent and a far cry from the job security the tech industry once promised.
Even journalism graduates, long told their industry was on life support, are faring better. The unemployment rate for them sits at just 4.4 percent.
Commenting on the state of the hiring pipeline, HR and business consultant Bryan Driscoll told the magazine that the core problem goes deeper than just supply and demand. In his words, “We’ve overproduced degrees without addressing how exploitative and gatekept the tech hiring pipeline has become.” He added that “Entry-level roles are vanishing, unpaid internships are still rampant, and companies are offshoring or automating the very jobs these grads trained for.”
That automation, of course, is being driven by artificial intelligence, the very technology many were once encouraged to master.
Finance expert Michael Ryan, founder of MichaelRyanMoney.com, offered a scathing critique of the mindset fueling the coding craze. He observed, “Every kid with a laptop thinks they’re the next Zuckerberg,” before adding that, “most can’t debug their way out of a paper bag.”
Ryan further explained that the market dynamics at play are straightforward but brutal. “We created a gold rush mentality around coding right as the gold ran out,” he said. “Companies are cutting engineering budgets by 40 percent while CS enrollment hits record highs. It’s basic economics. Flood the market, crater the wages.”
For some, the fallout has been deeply personal. One laid-off tech worker told SFGATE that she had to start selling her blood plasma just to make ends meet.
The reality is grim for many who once believed coding was a bulletproof career plan. While some may pivot to other industries or retrain, Futurism.com highlights the larger, looming question: what happens when the industry you prepared for becomes the very thing that automates you out?
