The volatile state of Software Engineering Hiring

One of my less healthy habits is to doomscroll a subreddit called /r/EconomyCharts. I much prefer numbers and cold, hard data when possible.

Recently, I found a post that showed an abrupt uptake in the number of SWE jobs posted on Indeed.

Initially, I thought “Amazing,” but my skeptical nature led me to dig in deeper.

That increase was fairly recent, only really taking off in January 2026. Additionally, starting Feb 21st, it seems to be dropping off at a much faster pace than it rose.

Zooming out as far as that chart can go, back to February 2020, we can see we are still only at 70% of prepandemic levels.

What does this mean?

I honestly don’t know, but I remain optimistic on a long enough timeline.

I am sure SWE jobs will adapt and change, similar to how most bakers no longer stock their ovens with wood and instead rely on gas or electricity to bake their goods.

Random: I will point out that the FRED datasource for this does not yet track job postings for “Prompt Engineers" quite yet… and hopefully never will.