Estimates of the number of people in the US whose primary job is software developer or computer programmer, drawn from the US Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.
Software development is among the occupations most exposed to AI today. The resulting disruption could have major impacts on employment, though the direction of that impact is still unclear. While task automation could reduce the number of programmers needed to make software, productivity gains may also lower software costs, driving new demand and potentially increasing net software employment.
We download basic monthly public-use microdata from the US Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS). Data begins in January 2020, when the CPS changed its occupation classifications. We count employed civilians aged 16 and over whose primary job is software developer (2018 Census occupation code 1021) or computer programmer (code 1010), weighted using the survey’s composite weight.
The chart’s shaded band is a 90% confidence interval from a household-clustered variance estimate. This should be treated as approximate, since it does not account for survey design considerations like the CPS’s geographic clustering.
Figures are not seasonally adjusted. Population controls are updated every January, which can shift the number of software developers on those dates. Data for October 2025 is missing because the survey was not collected during the federal government shutdown.
Our charts, text and processing are available under the Creative Commons Attribution license. The underlying data comes from US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps.html) and is subject to its own licence or terms.
Estimates of the number of people in the US whose primary job is software developer or computer programmer, drawn from the US Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.