Steven Bubonja graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science five years ago. He’s still looking for his first job in the technology sector.

Despite applying for hundreds of roles – everything from junior software developer to business analyst programmer – the 35-year-old resident of St. Catharines, Ont., hasn’t been able to break into his chosen field. To pay the bills and support his family, Mr. Bubonja has continued to work in heating, ventilation and air conditioning, the field he was trying to ditch.

“I was kind of blown away, because in HVAC, I would basically call everyone in the city and by the end of the week, I would have a job,” he said. “For computer science, you could be applying to 200 to 300 companies and it may not materialize to anything.”

Mr. Bubonja’s experience is hardly unique. After a pandemic hiring boom, the technology sector has been mired in a multiyear funk. Employment in certain high-tech roles has plateaued or fallen. Job postings have collapsed. And with companies looking for efficiencies through artificial intelligence, there are mounting fears that junior-level roles will dry up.

For many young people, the tech sector was considered a safe haven for building a career, and “learn to code” a salient piece of advice. But for graduates like Mr. Bubonja, reality has proven more complicated.

“You’d want to really think about it now if you’re getting into school for comp sci and be more realistic about what you can get out of it,” he said.

The pandemic led to a frenzy in the tech space. People were stuck at home and needing digital services, and because interest rates were low, companies big and small could borrow heavily to invest in their operations.

“Suddenly there was a massive rise in demand for tech companies and tech products as everyone sort of transitioned into virtual spaces in lieu of real spaces,” said Viet Vu, manager of economics research for public policy and leadership at The Dais, a think tank at Toronto Metropolitan University. As a result, “there was a massive wave of hiring.”

Between 2020 and 2022, tech job postings more than doubled on the hiring site Indeed Canada, reflecting opportunities for thousands of people. As of June, 2023, employment in computer systems design in Canada – a rough proxy for the tech industry – had risen by 45 per cent (or roughly 121,000 positions) since the end of 2019.

Since then, the industry has gone through a dramatic reset. Many companies said they expanded too quickly, or struggled to adapt to higher interest rates, leading to scores of layoffs. As of early July, tech job vacancies on Indeed Canada were down 21 per cent from February, 2020. And tech employment has faded from 2023 peaks.

“The tech sector is still large in employment, but for job seekers, the market has become tougher,” said Brendon Bernard, senior economist at Indeed Canada.

Tech giants are continuing to cut back their global work force this year, with many of those decisions tied to artificial intelligence.

In May, Microsoft MSFT-Q laid off nearly 6,000 employees, followed by another 9,000 workers in July. Chief executive officer Satya Nadella says AI now writes 20 to 30 per cent of Microsoft’s code. Meta META-Q announced layoffs at the beginning of the year that would see 3,600 employees let go as part of navigating what CEO Mark Zuckerberg refers to as an “intense year” focused on developing AI talent.

In April, Shopify SHOP-T CEO Tobi Lutke posted an internal memo that said resources for expanding headcount would only be given to jobs that cannot be automated by AI.

There is, however, some skepticism around the extent to which AI is truly responsible for layoffs. “As a founder, seeking investments, of a company that’s in a public market that trades stock, you don’t want to rattle the market and say ‘Oh we’re actually in a really tough position because we can’t borrow money cheaply and the economic condition isn’t great,’” said Mr. Vu, “You want to be able to at least try to shape the narrative on why your company’s headcount isn’t growing as quickly as it should, and in fact right now, AI certainly seems like a good reason to attribute that to.”

Mr. Bernard said that there are more job vacancies related to training or maintaining AI than traditional tech jobs such as software engineering. “Job postings are quite elevated for data centre technicians,” he said as an example. Conversely, “there are a range of jobs where demand has come down a lot – software engineers, in general – but also a range of developer-type roles, such as front-end developers and JavaScript developers.”

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As companies look to cut back, they’re often culling entry-level roles. Jeremy Shaki, CEO and co-founder of coding bootcamp Lighthouse Labs, said there are drawbacks to not supporting the next wave of potential talent.

“You’re going to have a very jaded generation of labour that are struggling, are not able to derive the income that allows them to contribute to the economy,” he said. “You’re going to have a very hard time replacing boomers and people who are retiring and resigning.”

Mr. Vu said that Dario Amodei and Sam Altman, the CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI, respectively, were once young people looking to break into the job market, too.

“The risk here is all of those incredibly truly disruptive technologies don’t come to be because the current cohort of inventors just have a really bad experience finding that first job to gain their footing,” he said.

There are tentative signs that young people are reassessing tech. For the fall term this year, Ontario universities received around 57,400 applications for full-time, first-year undergraduate programs in computer and information systems, a decline of 27 per cent over one year, according to recent data from the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre.

Both Mr. Shaki and Mr. Vu advise recent computer science grads to begin networking, build transferrable skills and prepare for a tough few months of potentially working a job unrelated to their field.

“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of people who just saw a generation of people naturally just get jobs and huge salaries right away,” said Mr. Shaki. “I think we’re in a time where just hustling for your job is a very big thing.”

Mr. Bubonja said he still hopes to find a job in tech by continuing to check in with the few connections he has in the industry and by contacting student support at Brock University, where he got his degree.

He said he’ll “keep applying to these jobs randomly online, but not at the scale I used to, because I have a family and I’m busy.”