The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) updated its Occupational Outlook Handbook with projections for 2025 to 2035. The entry that covers software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers starts from 1,905,400 jobs and projects 10% growth, 185,400 more, with about 106,100 openings a year once retirements and moves are counted. The outlook cites expansion of software for AI, connected devices, robotics, and automation, plus security work, as the sources of demand.
Ten percent over a decade is slower than last time and faster than most occupations. I do not think the headline number is the useful part. The useful part is what it implies about the mix.
If developer jobs grow at a steady, moderate rate while the tools absorb more of the routine coding, the roles that grow are not the generalist junior requisition. They are the ones that pair front-end work with something the tools do not do: testing strategy, accessibility, platform ownership, security, the judgment to decide what to build. The agency puts developers and testers in one occupation, and I think the line between them is blurring.
So my view for a web team planning headcount is that the problem is not scarcity. There will be people. The problem is the shape of the roles, and a team that writes the same job description it wrote in 2019 will hire for a job that is slowly disappearing.
When your team last opened a role, did the description change, or did it get copied forward?
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