NRI PULSE STAFF REPORT
San Ramon, CA, August 11, 2025: For more than a decade, students across the United States were told — by tech executives, billionaires, and even U.S. presidents — that learning to code was the key to a secure, high-paying job. But as The New York Times reports, for many new graduates in 2025, the reality is far from golden.
Take 21-year-old Manasi Mishra from San Ramon, California. As reported by The New York Times, she was inspired by those promises, coded her first website in elementary school, took advanced computing classes in high school, and majored in computer science at Purdue University. Yet, after a year of job hunting, she graduated in May without a single tech job offer. The only company that called her for an interview, she said in a TikTok video, was Chipotle.
According to the Times, the downturn has been fueled by two major forces: widespread layoffs at major tech companies like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence tools that can write code, reducing the need for entry-level programmers.
The impact is stark. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York says unemployment among recent computer science graduates is 6.1 percent — more than double the rate for biology or art history majors.
Some graduates, like Oregon’s Zach Taylor, have applied to thousands of jobs without success. Taylor, 25, says he has applied for 5,762 tech jobs since graduating in 2023, landing only 13 interviews and no offers. Even McDonald’s rejected his application for “lack of experience.”
Others are facing an A.I. “doom loop.” Applicants use A.I. tools to quickly send out résumés, while companies use A.I. to scan and reject them — often within minutes.
Education experts say the tech job crunch is a sharp turnaround from just a few years ago, when graduates could “fight off offers” from top companies. Now, they’re competing with machines — and each other — for fewer openings.
Some, like Mishra, are pivoting. After failing to get the Chipotle job, she leaned into her TikTok side hustle as a beauty influencer and landed a tech sales role instead of a programming one. She starts work this month.
For a generation raised to believe that “learning to code” was the surest path to success, the message is changing. The jobs are still there — but they’re fewer, harder to get, and often require new skills in A.I.
Cover photo: Manasi Misra/@Khuhlina/TikTok
