Software engineering demographics

Software engineers form a noticeable part of the workforce around the world. There are an estimated 26.9 million professional software engineers in the world as of 2022, up from 21 million in 2016.

United States
In 2022, there were an estimated 4.4 million professional software engineers in North America. There are 152 million people employed in the US workforce, making software engineers 2.54% of the total workforce. The total above is an increase compared to around 3.87 million software engineers employed in 2016.

Summary
Based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2002, about 612,000 software engineers worked in the U.S. – about one out of every 200 workers. There were 55% to 60% as many software engineers as all traditional engineers. This comparison holds true for practitioners, managers, educators, or technicians/programmers. Software engineering had 612,000 practitioners: 264,790 managers, 16,495 educators, and 457,320 programmers.

Software engineers vs. traditional engineers
The following two tables compare the number of software engineers (611,900 in 2002) versus the number of traditional engineers (1,157,020 in 2002).

There are another 1,500,000 people in system analysis, system administration, and computer support, many of whom might be called software engineers. Many systems analysts manage software development teams, and as analysis is an important software engineering role, many of them may be considered software engineers in the near future. This means that the number of software engineers may actually be much higher.

It is important to note that the number of software engineers declined by 5 to 10 percent from 2000 to 2002.

Computer managers vs. construction and engineering managers
Computer and information system managers (264,790) manage software projects, as well as computer operations. Similarly, Construction and engineering managers (413,750) oversee engineering projects, manufacturing plants, and construction sites. Computer management is 64% the size of construction and engineering management.

Software engineering educators vs. engineering educators
Most people working in the field of computer science, whether making software systems (software engineering) or studying the theoretical and mathematical facts of software systems (computer science), acquire degrees in computer science. The data shows that the combined number of chemistry and physics educators (29,610) nearly equals the number of engineering educators (29,310). It is estimated that roughly half of computer science educators emphasize the practical (software engineering), and the other half emphasize the theoretical (computer science). This means that software engineering education is 56% the size of traditional engineering education. There are more computer science educators than chemistry and physics educators combined, or engineering educators.

Relation to IT demographics
Software engineers are part of the much larger software, hardware, application, and operations community. In 2000 in the U.S., there were about 680,000 software engineers and about 10,000,000 IT workers.

There are no numbers on testers in the BLS data.

India
There has been a healthy growth in the number of India's IT professionals over the past few years. From a base of 6,800 knowledge workers in 1985–86, the number increased to 522,000 software and services professionals by the end of 2001–02. It is estimated that out of these 528,000 knowledge workers, almost 170,000 are working in the IT software and services export industry; nearly 106,000 are working in the IT enabled services and over 230,000 in user organizations.

Australia
In May 2024, the Australian government reported that 169,300 Australians are employed as software and applications programmers, 17% of who are women. The role grew annually by 8,300 workers.