TOKYO - Businesses worldwide are grappling with a growing concern: will artificial intelligence take away human jobs? Yet in the United States, recent developments suggest a more complex reality. Job openings for software developers have been rising since around November 2025, according to U.S. employment site Indeed.
The increase coincided with a sharp improvement in the performance of coding agents such as Claude Code, which can automate software development tasks based simply on user instructions. In other words, advances in AI appear to be contributing to an increase in hiring rather than a decline.
Why is this happening? According to Atsushi Nakata, head of Nikkei BP's AI and Data Lab, two major factors are driving the trend.
The first is changing corporate demand. Among the top 10 companies increasing software developer recruitment in the United States, many are consulting firms, IT vendors and major technology groups.
Large consulting firms such as Accenture are shifting toward end-to-end business models that combine consulting, system development and operations management. As a result, they are expanding recruitment of engineers involved in software development.
The second factor is that barriers to software creation have fallen sharply. In the past, building software or apps required specialized programming expertise. Now, users can create software simply by describing what they want in everyday language to AI tools.
This has significantly improved development efficiency. As the range of tasks that can be automated expands, overall demand for software-related work has grown rather than shrunk.
At first glance, greater efficiency would seem likely to reduce jobs. But the opposite may occur. Nakata says this reflects an economic principle identified 150 years ago: Jevons paradox.
Named after British economist William Stanley Jevons, the theory emerged in the 19th century when steam engines became increasingly fuel-efficient. Many expected coal consumption to fall as engines used less fuel.
Instead, lower operating costs encouraged broader industrial use of steam power. Even though each machine consumed coal more efficiently, total coal demand increased as more engines were deployed.
The same dynamic may now be unfolding with AI. As the technology becomes cheaper and more effective, adoption expands, creating new business demand and, in some cases, more employment opportunities.
What began as a fear of job losses may instead become a story of changing work, rising productivity and expanding demand.
Source: テレ東BIZ
