Computer Science Grads Face 7.5% Unemployment: AI Job Cuts Crush Coding Dream
Key Takeaways
- Computer engineering graduates hit 7.5% unemployment, third highest among all majors
- Computer science majors face 6.1% unemployment, well above national average
- Art history majors enjoy 3% unemployment, half the rate of tech graduates
- Nearly 150,000 tech workers cut in 2024 across 520+ companies
- AI automation eliminates entry-level coding positions faster than expected
- Job listings for graduates dropped 15% between July 2024 and April 2025
- "No-hire, no-fire" economy creates hiring freeze despite low overall unemployment
- Liberal arts majors now outperform STEM graduates in job prospects
The Numbers Don't Lie, Tech's Golden Ticket Turns to Scrap Metal
The dream sold to every kid who could type "Hello World" just died a messy death. Computer engineering graduates report a 7.5% unemployment rate, the third highest among all majors and more than twice art history's 3%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Walk that back a minute. Art history majors, those people everyone said would end up asking "do you want fries with that?", they're finding jobs while the coding wizards collect unemployment checks.
Computer science and computer engineering unemployment rates hit 6.1% and 7.5%, respectively, notably higher than the national average. These aren't liberal arts casualties. These are the STEM golden children, the ones who followed every guidance counselor's advice about "future-proof" careers. They learned Python, JavaScript, and React. They built GitHub portfolios. They did everything right.
But right doesn't matter when the machine eats itself. The same artificial intelligence they studied to build is now building itself. Entry-level positions vanish faster than free beer at a developer conference. Companies don't need junior programmers when ChatGPT writes cleaner code than most computer science graduates on their best day.
The Federal Reserve data shows what everyone in tech already knows but won't say out loud. The gold rush ended. The mine collapsed. And the miners are standing around wondering what happened to their shovels.
AI Doesn't Sleep, And It Doesn't Need Health Insurance
Unemployment is rising among recent college grads as employers turn to artificial intelligence to handle entry-level work. Every coding bootcamp graduate, every computer science major with dreams of six-figure salaries, they're competing against algorithms that work for the cost of electricity.
The machine doesn't call in sick. It doesn't demand vacation days or stock options. It writes code at 3 AM without coffee breaks. Nearly 150,000 employees have been cut from over 520 tech companies in 2024. These aren't just layoffs. They're replacements. Human workers swapped out for silicon that never sleeps.
Companies discovered something beautiful and terrible. Why hire twenty junior developers when one AI can do their work faster, cheaper, and without the attitude? The entry-level positions that created the pathway into tech careers, debug this, test that, write documentation, artificial intelligence handles it all now.
The cruel mathematics are simple. Train an AI once, use it forever. Train a human for months, pay them for years. Corporate America made its choice with the cold efficiency of a spreadsheet. The humans lost.
Graduates who spent four years learning to think like computers find themselves replaced by computers that learned to think like humans. The irony tastes bitter as burned coffee in a programmer's all-nighter cup.
The "Learn to Code" Generation Hits the Wall
"Learn to code" push is backfiring spectacularly for those who majored in computer science in college. Remember when politicians told coal miners and factory workers to just learn coding? When tech evangelists promised anyone could become a programmer with enough YouTube tutorials and determination?
Those chickens came home to roost with algorithmic precision. The advice wasn't wrong, it was just twenty years too late. By the time everyone learned to code, the machines learned to code better.
Every high school guidance counselor who pushed STEM careers, every parent who steered their kid toward computer science because "that's where the money is", they're watching their advice age like milk in the sun. The guaranteed path to prosperity became a trail leading nowhere.
Job listings on the Handshake recruitment platform, which caters to students and recent graduates, fell 15% between July 2024 and mid-April 2025 compared to the same period a year earlier. The opportunities aren't just scarce. They're evaporating faster than morning dew in Death Valley.
Students who followed the script find themselves holding worthless tickets to a show that got canceled. Four years of algorithms, data structures, and software engineering principles. Tens of thousands in student loans. All for degrees that qualify them to compete with machines that never need sleep, never ask for raises, and never quit to join startups.
The market spoke with the brutal honesty of capitalism. Human programmers became luxury items in a discount world.
Liberal Arts Majors Dance on STEM's Grave
The world turned upside down and nobody sent a memo. Liberal arts majors have better employment prospects than STEM-related majors, according to new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Philosophy majors, those dreamy intellectuals everyone said would starve, they're eating while computer science graduates check their empty bank accounts.
Art history graduates hit 3% unemployment. Philosophy majors land jobs. English majors find work. Meanwhile, the computer engineering crowd sits at 7.5% unemployment wondering where their guaranteed future went. The joke writes itself, but nobody's laughing.
Nutrition sciences, construction services, and animal/plant sciences had unemployment rates of 1% or lower among college graduates ages 22 to 27. People who study what plants eat have better job prospects than people who program computers. The absurdity cuts deep as a debugger finding the error that crashed your entire system.
Companies still need humans for tasks that require actual human judgment. They need people who can read faces, understand subtext, navigate office politics, and explain complex ideas to clients who don't speak binary. Liberal arts majors spent four years learning exactly those skills while computer science students memorized syntax.
The market corrected itself with surgical precision. Skills that machines can replicate became worthless overnight. Skills that require human intuition, creativity, and emotional intelligence, those became gold. The liberal arts majors were mining the right mountain all along.
The No-Hire, No-Fire Economy Freezes Out Fresh Blood
The unemployment rate has stayed low mostly because layoffs are still relatively rare. The actual hiring rate, new hires as a percentage of all jobs, has fallen to 2014 levels, when the unemployment rate was much higher, at 6.2%. Economists call it a no-hire, no-fire economy.
Companies aren't firing people. They're just not hiring new ones. Existing employees hold onto their positions like life rafts in a storm. Nobody quits, nobody gets laid off, but nobody gets hired either. The door slammed shut on an entire generation of graduates.
Hiring in recent months has ground to its slowest pace since the start of the pandemic, with employers adding just 73,000 jobs in July. The machine stopped feeding new workers into the system. Everyone already inside stays put. Everyone outside presses their faces against the glass.
New graduates find themselves locked out of their own futures. They have degrees, they have skills, they have debt, but they don't have jobs. The economy runs on autopilot while fresh talent rots on the vine.
This isn't a recession in the traditional sense. It's worse. In a recession, everyone suffers together. In a no-hire economy, the established workers stay comfortable while the newcomers starve. The ladder got pulled up after the last generation climbed it.
Corporate America discovered it could function just fine without injecting new blood. Why take risks on untested graduates when proven workers do the job? Why pay training costs when existing employees already know the systems? The mathematics of corporate efficiency leave no room for opportunity.
Tech Companies Pile Bodies Like Cordwood
With hundreds of thousands of already established tech workers cut loose into the job market, new graduates are facing increased competition for fewer openings. The layoffs weren't random. They were surgical strikes against entire job categories that artificial intelligence could handle.
Senior developers with decades of experience compete for the same entry-level positions as fresh graduates. Except the senior developers have actual track records, shipped products, and battle scars from real projects. New graduates have classroom assignments and theoretical knowledge.
The competition isn't fair. It's not supposed to be fair. Companies get to choose between proven veterans willing to take pay cuts and untested rookies demanding market-rate salaries. The choice makes itself.
Every tech layoff adds another body to the pile of available talent. Google cuts thousands. Meta eliminates positions. Amazon streamlines operations. Each announcement sends more experienced workers into the job market where they elbow out fresh graduates with ruthless efficiency.
The ecosystem collapsed from the top down. Senior positions disappeared first, pushing experienced workers down the ladder. They took mid-level jobs, bumping those workers down to junior roles. Junior developers grabbed entry-level positions, leaving new graduates with nothing but empty promises and mounting debt.
The conveyor belt broke. Workers piled up at every level while companies discovered they could operate with skeleton crews and artificial intelligence filling the gaps.
The Great STEM Betrayal Reveals Itself
For two decades, America sold a story. Science, technology, engineering, mathematics, these subjects guaranteed prosperity. Politicians promised it. Educators preached it. Parents believed it. Students bought it with borrowed money and deferred dreams.
The story was half true. STEM fields did create wealth and opportunity. But they also created the tools that made STEM workers obsolete. Computer science majors built the artificial intelligence that eliminated computer science jobs. They automated themselves out of existence with the precision of their own code.
Computer Science which is considered as a Golden Ticket to the highest paying tech jobs is now seen as a field with the most unemployment in the United States. The golden ticket turned to fool's gold while everyone watched Netflix and ordered DoorDash through apps that fresh graduates couldn't get hired to maintain.
Students followed the map their elders drew. They studied hard, learned valuable skills, and graduated into a world that no longer needed those skills in human form. The betrayal cuts deeper because it wasn't intentional. Nobody planned this outcome. Market forces and technological progress intersected at the worst possible moment for an entire generation of graduates.
The promise of STEM careers wasn't a lie when it was made. It just had an expiration date that nobody printed on the package. Technology evolves faster than educational systems can adapt. Students spent four years learning to be human computers while actual computers learned to replace them.
What Comes Next After the Code Goes Cold
The damage spreads beyond individual careers. Universities built entire computer science programs around employment promises they can't keep. Students borrowed money for degrees that don't deliver. Parents invested in their children's futures based on outdated economic models.
The market is rough for college grads, and especially rough for computer-related majors that the STEM-first mindset pushed as a guaranteed safe career track. The guaranteed safety net became a trap door. The reliable path to middle-class prosperity turned into a dead end marked with student loan debt.
Some graduates pivot to different fields. Others pursue master's degrees, hoping additional education will separate them from the pack. Many just wait, hoping the market will correct itself and demand for human programmers will return.
But artificial intelligence doesn't move backward. It doesn't forget how to write code or suddenly become worse at debugging. The genie escaped the bottle and it's not going back inside. The tools that computer science majors learned to build have grown beyond their creators' ability to control or compete with them.
The next generation of students watches this disaster unfold in real time. They see the unemployment numbers, hear the stories, witness the struggle. Maybe they choose different majors. Maybe they find new paths that artificial intelligence hasn't learned to walk yet.
The cycle continues with cruel consistency. Today's safe career becomes tomorrow's automated function. The only guarantee is that nothing stays guaranteed forever.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are computer science graduates struggling to find jobs?
AI automation eliminates entry-level programming positions, while massive tech layoffs flood the market with experienced workers competing for fewer openings. Companies prefer AI tools and senior developers over fresh graduates.
Is the 7.5% unemployment rate for computer engineering graduates accurate?
Yes, according to Federal Reserve Bank of New York data. Computer engineering majors face the third-highest unemployment rate among all college majors, while computer science majors hit 6.1% unemployment.
Which college majors have better job prospects than computer science?
Art history (3% unemployment), philosophy, nutrition sciences (1% unemployment), journalism (4.4% unemployment), and most liberal arts fields currently outperform tech majors in employment rates.
How many tech workers were laid off in 2024?
Nearly 150,000 employees were cut from over 520 tech companies in 2024, creating massive competition for remaining positions and eliminating pathways for new graduates.
Will the computer science job market recover?
Unlikely in its previous form. AI automation continues advancing, companies operate efficiently with smaller teams, and the "no-hire, no-fire" economy shows no signs of changing direction.
Should students avoid computer science majors?
Students should carefully consider current market realities versus long-term career projections. Fields requiring human creativity, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal skills show stronger employment prospects.
Are coding bootcamps still worth the investment?
Current market conditions suggest coding bootcamps may not provide sufficient return on investment, as entry-level positions they traditionally filled are being automated or eliminated.
What skills are most valuable in today's job market?
Human-centered skills like communication, critical thinking, project management, and domain expertise in fields that require human judgment and creativity show the strongest employment prospects.