Coding and software development were the fastest-falling occupations for UK graduates last year, according to data published on Saturday in the 2027 Guardian University Guide.
The proportion of computer science graduates finding professional jobs as coders or programmers fell to 28% last year, from about 40% previously, said Matt Hiely-Rayner, director of the Intelligent Metrix consultancy, which compiles the guide. The share moving into any graduate-level occupation dropped to 50%, from more than 60% two years earlier.
“With AI providing such responsive and cheap grunt work in this field, it’s hard not to conclude that this is behind the trend,” Hiely-Rayner said.
The figures draw on the graduate outcomes survey conducted by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which gathered responses from more than 350,000 former students 15 months after they completed courses in 2024.
Demand also declined for economics graduates in well-paid financial roles such as economists and management consultants, categories that previously enjoyed strong employer demand.
Charlie Ball, head of labour market intelligence for Jisc, the UK’s data and technology agency for education and research, said computer science graduates were diversifying into related fields including cybersecurity and network engineering. “It is clear that something did happen to the software developer labour market last year,” he said, adding that pure coding jobs were in particularly short supply in 2025.
Ball said finance employers described changing jobs rather than replacing them with AI, expecting new hires to have familiarity with the technology. Some firms, he said, were embracing AI tools and laying people off in the hope of gaining an edge, though employers were not unanimous.
The concern echoes wider debate over automation’s effect on hiring, including a warning from Atlanta Fed chief Raphael Bostic on AI’s potential impact on the labour market.
The guide’s annual evaluation placed the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the London School of Economics in the top three overall. The University of Birmingham rose to 14th, its highest position, driven by improvements in student satisfaction.
Birmingham vice-chancellor Adam Tickell said the university was weaving employer-demanded skills into its courses and offering undergraduates an “intercalated year” in subjects such as AI and data science. “This is about equipping people for the world they are in, whether or not we like the world we are becoming,” he said.