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If you pay attention to the news, you’ve no doubt noticed an avalanche of headlines about layoffs over the past few months. Perhaps that’s made you debate whether to go on the job hunt. After all, the tech job market must be cooling off, right?

That’s not the mindset of many software engineers, according to Hired’s new State of Software Engineers 2023 report. Some 68 percent of the 1,300 software engineers surveyed for the report said they weren’t concerned about losing their jobs in the next six months. (In addition to the survey, Hired analyzed data from 68,500 job candidates and 494,000 interview requests between companies and software engineers between January 2021 and December 2022.)

Moreover, another 40 percent of respondents said they’d witnessed demand for engineering talent increase in 2022, and they expected that to continue into 2023. Here’s a fuller breakdown of engineers’ perceptions of the demand for their talents:

There’s good reason for software engineers to believe the hiring market will remain strong well into the future. The tech unemployment rate fell to 1.5 percent in January, according to the latest CompTIA analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Despite the layoffs in Big Tech, many industries outside of tech experienced strong tech job demand at the beginning of the year, including and insurance (up 30,576 tech job postings in January) and manufacturing (24,269 tech job postings).

Moreover, startup layoffs dipped in February, according to layoffs.fyi, which crowdsources its data—but it remains to be seen whether that decline will sustain into March and beyond.

Meanwhile, some 76 percent of software engineers also told Hired that flexible hours made for an ideal company culture and work environment, ahead of good co-workers (57 percent), opportunities for professional development and career growth (55 percent), great managers (47 percent), and opportunities to solve challenging problems (29 percent). For companies that want to prevent their software engineers from exploring opportunities with rivals, offering flexible schedules and hours can prove a great way to boost morale.

 

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