AI was supposed to kill engineering jobs, but new data suggests they’re the most resilient
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- SignalFire's 'State of Talent Report' tracked careers across 80+ million companies and found engineering was the most resilient job function in 2025, with only an 11% hiring decline versus a 25% drop in overall tech hiring compared to 2019 levels.
- Engineers comprised 55% of all new hires in 2025 across the 12 'Tech Majors' — Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, Tesla, Uber, Airbnb, Block, and Stripe — up from 46% in 2019.
- Early-stage startups collectively hired 7% more engineers in 2025 than in 2019, bucking the broader tech contraction, according to SignalFire's data.
- Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported tech layoffs hit their highest single-month total in years in May, with AI the most-cited reason — a framing SignalFire's Asher Bantock called 'inconsistent' with the hiring reality.
- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang rejected the displacement theory outright, saying that since all Nvidia engineers began using agentic AI, 'software engineers are busier than ever' as agents push them to 'generate the next idea.'
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned last year that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs and push unemployment to 20% within five years — but the company's own head of economics, Peter McCrory, said in March he had not seen significant AI-driven workforce effects.
- SignalFire's Bantock framed engineering's resilience as a classic Jevons paradox: greater efficiency from AI hasn't reduced demand for engineers, it's expanded it, because 'there's endless work for them to do.'
Why it matters: Engineering's 11% hiring decline versus 25% for tech overall exposes a gap between the AI-displacement narrative tech leaders like Anthropic's Dario Amodei promote and the on-the-ground data — undermining the 'AI' justification companies cite for layoffs while still leaving real hiring pain for non-engineering roles across the industry.
