Andy Garcia · freelance dev
FRENES
Back to the blog
Jobs & Tech

US Software Job Postings on Indeed Are Up 24% Since Late February 2025. In France, They Fell 25%

October 19, 2026 7 min read

On October 11, CNBC reported that US software development job postings had risen almost 15 percent since late February 2025, when Anthropic released Claude Code, while overall postings fell 7 percent. The figures come from Indeed Hiring Lab, which published them on July 8.

The series behind them did not stop in July. Indeed's index of US software development postings, published on FRED and last updated on October 15, read 78.1 on October 9 (February 1, 2020 = 100, seasonally adjusted). Against late February 2025, that is a rise of about 24 percent. The rebound is larger than the figure still circulating.

It is also narrower than the word "rebound" suggests. I am a freelance developer in France and the CTO of a LegalTech built on Claude, so I read the data with two questions: what kind of work is coming back, and is it coming back where I sell? The answers are "senior work, often labeled AI" and "not in France, so far".

The percentage depends on the day you start counting

The same index gives very different headlines depending on the baseline:

  • From late February 2025 (62.8 on February 28): up about 24 percent.
  • From its lowest point, 61.1 on May 17, 2025: up about 28 percent.
  • From October 9, 2025 (64.3): up about 21.5 percent in a year.
  • From February 1, 2020: down about 22 percent.
  • From the peak, 233.8 on February 28, 2022: down about 67 percent. US software postings sit at roughly a third of their 2022 level.

Hiring Lab's July note put the gap with pre-pandemic at about 27.5 percent, and CNBC repeated that figure in October. Both were right for the data they used. The July note does not give the date of its last data point: on the series as FRED published it on October 15, the index already stood about 18 percent above February 28, 2025 on July 8, and it has gained about 5 percent since. FRED's notes add two caveats: Indeed seasonally adjusts each series with patterns from 2017 to 2019, and its history was revised when the method changed in December 2022, so older published figures may not match the page.

The habit I take from this: when a client, a recruiter or a platform quotes a market percentage, ask for the start date. A bounce off the bottom and a return to normal are different stories.

What the rebound is made of

Hiring Lab's July 8 note breaks the gain down. 71 percent of the increase in US software development postings between May 2025 and May 2026 came from senior roles, and 37 percent came from jobs that mention AI in their title. The two shares add up to more than 100, so they overlap. The note's conclusion: demand is growing "for experienced professionals who can work with AI, not necessarily a broad-based recovery across all software roles."

A second note, on July 23, gives the stock behind the flow. In the first quarter of 2026, 69.3 percent of US software development postings were senior and 4.5 percent were entry-level, the lowest entry share of any sector in the note. Seniority is not read from the job title. An algorithm classifies each posting by its tasks: senior means "strategic vision" or "advanced specialized knowledge", typically five years of experience or more.

Pay follows the same slope. On September 17, Hiring Lab reported that US advertised pay in the most AI-exposed occupations, software development among them, has climbed about 46 percent since 2021, against 25 percent in the least exposed. The gap is about 17 points at the senior level and about 2 points at entry level, a split Hiring Lab itself treats as suggestive. Hiring Lab adds that part of the rise reflects the mix shifting toward fewer, more senior postings.

According to CNBC, Sneha Puri, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, said companies still need developers to oversee AI's work, refine products and help clients integrate the technology into their operations.

The freelance marketplaces show the same shape. Upwork's second-quarter results, filed on August 10, reported gross services volume down 4 percent year over year, AI-related work up more than 22 percent, and its AI Strategy & Consulting category up more than 50 percent. Its CEO, Hayden Brown, said that "lower-complexity work continues to shift toward automation." I wrote about that filing on September 29. The Indeed data tells the same story for jobs: fewer generic seats, more demand for people who can answer for what the tools produce.

The French series went the other way

Indeed publishes the same index for France. On October 9, French software development postings stood at 51.7, about half their February 2020 level. Against late February 2025, they are down about 25 percent, and about 9 percent over the year. The series hit its lowest point on July 4, 2026, at 49.9. It climbed to 53.8 on September 21, then lost about 4 percent in under three weeks, which leaves it about 3.6 percent above the low. A floor, perhaps. Not a rebound.

Hiring Lab wrote in July that the software rebound is not unique to the US, and flagged the exceptions: "With the exception of Germany and France, the share of all job postings that are software development jobs has been on the rise in most large, developed economies analyzed by Hiring Lab." Germany's index, at 47.6 on October 9, was at the lowest value in its series.

The wider French market explains part of it. Indeed's French team reported on October 1 that postings fell 16.6 percent year on year in September, that advertised wages grew 1.7 percent in August against 2.6 percent inflation, and that the share of permanent contracts (CDI) among postings from direct employers slipped from 78 percent in 2024 to 75 percent in 2026. Its reading: employers are looking for more flexibility while the outlook stays uncertain.

Two cautions before drawing conclusions. Each country's index is relative to its own February 2020, so compare trajectories, not levels. And Indeed counts job postings published by employers. Freelance missions, the kind I look for on Malt and Upwork, are not what this data measures. A company that will not open a permanent position may still buy a mission. That is a hypothesis, not a finding.

What I would do as a freelance developer in France

Sell the senior part explicitly. The US rebound buys judgment: scoping, architecture, review of generated code, integration into systems that already exist. "I code faster with AI" describes a cost saving. "I answer for what the agent produced, and here is how I check it" describes the work these postings pay for. I orchestrate my own build work with Claude Code, and the part I cannot delegate is the decision on what ships. That is what I would put first in a profile.

Name missions after AI outcomes, not AI tools. 37 percent of the US gain came from postings with AI in the title. On a freelance profile, that means missions described by their result (an AI feature in production, a model kept inside a client's data rules), not a list of APIs.

Reach the demand where it grows. If the French line stays near its floor, the growth I can reach from France is the part sold remotely, which is what Upwork's AI numbers measure. That is a reason to keep a profile alive on a platform that serves those clients, even with French clients first.

Check the series yourself. Both indices are free on FRED, under IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE and IHLIDXFRTPSOFTDEVE. A monthly look at the French line says more about next quarter's pipeline than a headline from another market.

If you hire, keep an entry door open. Puri put it plainly to CNBC: "Today's entry-level talent becomes tomorrow's senior experts." With 4.5 percent of US software postings at entry level, the senior freelancers of the next decade depend on who agrees to train them now.

The rebound is real in the data. It is also senior, often labeled AI, and so far it has skipped France. For a freelancer here, that is a positioning brief, not a forecast.

Sources

A project like this one?

I design and deploy products like this. Let's talk.

Let's talk