(I suspect some very junior jobs have genuinely been taken by AI, but it seems to me that the driving factor is still a return-to-mean after ZIRP).

It correlates pretty well with the line showing technology jobs over time in the article at hiringlab.org: https://www.hiringlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/sector_...

The main difference seems to be that the number of jobs posted to HN has dropped significantly lower, well below the low point of 2020. It's really pretty dismal, which seems to have started around the middle of 2022. Maybe the types of jobs that get posted to HN are doing even worse than "technology" in general.

Data scientist is an exception based on title, but in my experience there are a large number of people with that title who have never heard of the scientific method, let alone could apply it with any rigor.

I'm sure LLMs are taking some of these jobs, but a lot of the decrease is probably due to general cutbacks on overhead and a realization that they produce limited value.

The hiring bar is going up partly because it’s become possible to spend the effort that would’ve gone into hiring to instead vibecode tools to do the easy bits of the required job - and delegate the rest, while finding new efficiencies in other team members’ roles to make room for what’s newly delegated. The net result is the same work getting done with fewer headcount.

The broad effect is the economy becomes more efficient and new jobs get created just as old jobs get divvied up according to the “replaceability” of each of the many roles that make up a particular job.

It is hard to tell what is really going on. No company will admit that they are firing, e.g., DEI hires from 2023. I have seen some open source CoC loudmouths being fired, but that is not enough to establish a large trend.

As companies tighten their belts, they’re quicker to cut low performers that had been hanging around for too long anyway because:

1) cost reduction

2) companies had been lazy at getting rid of low performers when the market was hot and they didn’t need to cut (and couldn’t find better devs to replace them anyway)

3) with the market this skewed towards employers, you can replace low performers with better talent anyway because everyone’s looking