AI and Tech Jobs: More Evidence That Panic Isn’t Justified
AI’s impact on the tech job market is less disruptive than developers fear. In fact, so far it seems to be creating rather than destroying jobs, according to a new talent survey from the Linux Foundation.
Participants in the foundation’s new report were four times as likely to say that AI is increasing software development jobs as compared to decreasing them. When asked about AI’s impact on the technical workforce, 32% said it has increased the number of software development positions; only 8% cited a decline.
AI was also credited for increases in overall headcount at survey respondents’ organizations: 33% said AI is responsible for an increase in headcount in 2025, as compared to 12% saying it is causing a decline.
However, as in another recent survey — LeadDev’s new report on engineering leadership — the outlook for entry-level tech roles was more concerning.
In the Linux Foundation report, 24% of participants said they think AI has increased these types of opportunities, but 18% said AI has decreased this type of job in the technical workforce.
And 24% of respondents in the Linux Foundation survey said that many traditional entry-level tasks are now handled by AI tools.
The results in the Linux Foundation’s “2025 State of Tech Talent” report came from a survey of 556 people who either hire, train or recruit IT professionals. Twenty-nine percent were in software development and 22% were in systems operations, administration, site reliability engineering or IT service management.
New AI-Specific Roles Emerge
An increase in AI-specific roles seems to be underlying the hiring picture, according to the Linux Foundation report:
- Overall, 57% expect to expand the number of roles that are AI-specific.
- Among those that have increased their AI-specific positions, 64% said that AI and machine learning (ML) operations engineer has emerged as a job role in their organization.
Survey participants were keen on training their current employees in AI skills. Nearly half — 49% — said they plan to upskill their existing workforce in AI to handle core AI activities.
The relative scarcity of AI-specific skills may be having an effect on retention. Excluding those that couldn’t answer the question, on average, only 19% of new hires are asked to leave within 6 months. That is down from both 39% in 2024 and 29% in 2023.
Hiring to fill a technical position is taking less time than it did in recent years, but it is still a time-consuming process. On average, according to the new report, it takes 3.7 months to fill a technical position. But that is down from both 5.4 months in 2024 and 4.6 months in 2023.
