Looks like the survey was done this month (Oct 2023).
The recent let goes have been strongly over-publicized in a desperate effort to keep software developer salaries down.
The actual change in the unemployment rate of software developers was a fraction of a percentage.
It's easily the biggest shift in the employment rate of developers we've seen in at least a decade. But it also did almost nothing to relieve the actual backlog of unmet demand for developers.
"But why do we hear so many stories of developers having trouble finding jobs?"
I'm glad you asked. (Steps up in soap box.)
Because for the first time in forever the shitty employers who can't keep their developers feel like they have negotiating power, and they love the feeling, and are making a big show of it. Those assholes are posting the majority of the current available jobs, because folks like me don't need to hire right now.
I don't need to hire right now, because I give my team a pay bump when the developer market rate guess up. It went up this year. I bumped their pay to match. They still work for me. Who could possibly have predicted that would work? Everyone could have, except somehow asshat-mc-always-hiring.
Most of the employers gloatingly turning down less-than-ideal candidates are going to completely miss this opportunity to hire at all, and will go back to paying 3x consulting rates to smaller firms that charge them $300.00 per hour worked. And rightly so. They suck and deserve to pay extra for sucking.
Source: I often get to charge these clowns an arm and a leg simply because I can, and they cannot, recruit and retain developer talent. I do try to mentor them on the topic, because I simply don't have the time to find and charge them all the glorious money they deserve to get charged. But I'm only one person, and I can only write so many huge invoices to huge assholes.
My mentoring attempts aside, I have job security because the majority of them don't actually want to get any less stupid about the whole thing.
(End soap box)
