Software Developer Statistics 2026

GitHub now serves more than 225 million of them, and the community is growing around the globe.

The United States (38.3 million) and India (32 million) remain the two largest developer communities, and each added more than 10 million developers this year.

The United States (38.3 million) and India (32 million) remain the two largest developer communities, and each added more than 10 million developers this year.

Software developers held about 1.7 million jobs in 2025.

In 2025, more than 10 million persons were employed as ICT specialists across the European Union (EU)

Across the whole of the EU, ICT specialists accounted for 5.0% of the overall number of employed people in 2025

From 2015 to 2025, the number of ICT specialists in the EU increased by 59.4%, more than 6 times the increase (9.8%) in total employment.

In 2025, 80.5% of men were employed as ICT specialists in the EU against 19.5% of women.

The median annual wage for software developers was $135,980 in May 2025.

The lowest 10 percent earned less than $82,460, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $214,670.

In May 2025, the median annual wages for software developers in some of the top industries in which they worked were as follows: Software publishers $164,550

The median annual wage for software quality assurance analysts and testers was $104,300 in May 2025.

Overall employment of software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers is projected to grow 10 percent from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the average for all occupations.

About 106,100 openings for software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers are projected each year, on average, over the decade.

Across all tech occupation categories covered in this report, the median salary, also referred to as the 50th percentile or midpoint, was an estimated $112,805 for the most recent year of available data.

software development jobs — especially ones linked to AI —are experiencing a strong pickup in demand, with that sector up 14% on a year-over-year basis as of April 30, 2026.

AI’s dual edge: Over 5% of job postings now mention AI, and software development job postings are up 14% year-over-year, with over 47% of job postings in the sector mentioning AI.

With the fixed-effect approach, the employment changes start later, but they are growing (reaching about 16% by October 2025, vs 13% in our paper with data only through July), and they have not shown a reversal.

33% say they are not happy at work this year.

The percentage of freelance or self-employed responses jumped from 3.9% to 10.5% just this year.

All Respondents Remote 32.4%

Developers only spend 16% of their time coding, and coding is not a friction point for developers, which is why coding assistants can enhance the experience without improving it.

Developers are losing valuable time to non-coding tasks: 50% report losing 10+ hours per week, and 90% lose 6+ hours or more, largely due to organizational inefficiencies.

63% of developers now say leaders don’t understand their pain points , up sharply from 44% last year.

Yet, 66% of developers don’t believe current metrics reflect their true contributions.

61% of junior developers find the job market challenging, while 54% of senior developers share this concern.

For the most used programming languages, JavaScript is at the top of the list for the 12th year in a row

It saw a 7 percentage point increase from 2024 to 2025; this speaks to its ability to be the go-to language for AI, data science, and back-end development.

Rust is yet again the most admired programming language (72%), followed by Gleam (70%), Elixir (66%) and Zig (64%).

From September 2025 to September 2026, TypeScript added 3.62 million monthly contributors, Python 3.23 million, and JavaScript 1.82 million, the largest gains among the top 10 languages.

Developers pushed code to GitHub 17.9 billion times in the past 12 months, more than in 2024 and 2025 combined.

Merged pull requests more than tripled to 1.3 billion over the same period, an average of 3.5 million a day.

The top five languages that developers want to adopt next are: Go (11%) Rust (10%) Python (7%) Kotlin (6%) TypeScript (6%)

84% of respondents are using or planning to use AI tools in their development process, an increase over last year (76%).

The overwhelming majority of respondents now use coding assistants and agents daily (73%), with nearly a third of daily users spending upwards of four hours.

Claude Code (66%) and GitHub Copilot (59%) are the leaders for coding agents.

85% of developers regularly use AI tools for coding and development, and 62% rely on at least one AI coding assistant, agent, or code editor.

AI adoption among software development professionals has surged to 90%, marking a 14% increase from last year.

typically dedicating a median of two hours daily to working with it.

By September 2026, more than 40% of pull requests on GitHub started with an agent’s first draft, up from 17% in March.

Among GitHub Copilot’s monthly active users, 55% now use agentic features, up from 35% a year ago.

72% of developers who have tried AI use it every day, and AI accounts for 42% of all committed code—a volume that developers expect will rise to 65% by 2027.

Almost all developers (99%) now report time savings by using AI tools, with 68% saving more than 10 hours a week

In fact, trust in the accuracy of AI has fallen from 40% in previous years to just 29% this year.

In fact, 66% of developers say they are spending more time fixing "almost-right" AI-generated code.

48% indicate they trust AI when they can easily validate the answers

Over 80% of respondents indicate that AI has enhanced their productivity.

While 24% of respondents report a "great deal" (4%) or "a lot" (20%) of trust in AI, 30% trust it "a little" (23%) or "not at all" (7%).

while 96% of developers report they do not fully trust that AI-generated code is functionally correct, only 48% state they always check their AI-assisted code before committing it.

while 96% of developers report they do not fully trust that AI-generated code is functionally correct, only 48% state they always check their AI-assisted code before committing it.

Surprisingly, we find that when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without—AI makes them slower.

In 45 percent of all test cases, LLMs introduced vulnerabilities classified within the OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) Top 10—the most critical web application security risks.