Growing up near Silicon Valley, Manasi Mishra often heard tech executives urging students to study programming, promising lucrative careers.
“The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary,” Ms. Mishra, now 21, recalls hearing as she grew up in San Ramon, Calif.
Those promises inspired her to code her first website in elementary school, take advanced computing in high school, and major in computer science at Purdue University. Yet, after a year-long job search, Ms. Mishra graduated in May without any offers.
Tech Industry Layoffs and A.I. Tools Reduce Entry-Level Jobs
“I just graduated with a computer science degree, and the only company that has called me for an interview is Chipotle,” Ms. Mishra said in a get-ready-with-me TikTok video this summer that has since racked up more than 147,000 views.
Since the early 2010s, tech leaders and U.S. presidents urged young people to learn coding, promising six-figure salaries and perks. Brad Smith, a top Microsoft executive, said in 2012, “Typically their starting salary is more than $100,000,” plus bonuses and stock grants.
The surge in computer science education followed, with undergraduate numbers more than doubling since 2014. But now, layoffs at Amazon, Intel, Meta, and Microsoft, along with A.I. programming tools that automate coding, have slashed entry-level opportunities.
New Graduates Face High Unemployment and Disheartening Job Hunts
Among recent grads aged 22 to 27, unemployment rates for computer science and engineering majors are 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent respectively, more than double those for biology or art history graduates.
Jeff Forbes, former National Science Foundation program director, said, “Computer science students who graduated three or four years ago would have been fighting off offers from top firms — and now that same student would be struggling to get a job from anyone.”
Thousands of graduates report applying to hundreds or even thousands of jobs, facing long processes with coding tests and interviews, only to be ghosted or rejected. Zach Taylor, who earned his degree from Oregon State University in 2023, has applied to nearly 6,000 tech jobs, landing just 13 interviews with no offers.
“The job search has been one of the most demoralizing experiences I have ever had to go through,” Mr. Taylor said.