The AI jobs apocalypse got postponed — devs are hiring again

Two years of "AI is coming for your job" and the data says the opposite. The Economist puts AI's US job creation at roughly 1 million, against about 200,000 layoffs companies have blamed on AI since mid-2023. The professions closest to the boom — engineers, software developers, mathematicians, data scientists — are sitting about 730,000 jobs above trend since 2022.

Developer hiring in particular has climbed back over its pre-2023 line. AI startups are hiring flat out, and incumbents are minting AI roles to keep pace. The distance between "AI writes code" and "we need fewer coders" turned out to be wider than the panic assumed.

The other half of the boom is physical. Data-centre construction spending is up 60% in a year, and the electricians, HVAC specialists, grid engineers and machine technicians it takes to build them are seeing advertised wages roughly 40% above comparable work. The cuts are real too — around 16,000 AI-attributed job losses announced per month across 2026 — but they land on routine admin and service roles, not on the people building the systems.

Why it matters: AI isn't deleting the work yet — it's repricing which skills get paid for it.