After two and a half years of disruption, the IT job market is seeing growth again. According to JustJoin.IT data, the portal saw a nearly 70% increase in job postings in the first half of this year compared to a year ago. Salaries are also rising, although experts indicate that the growth rate isn't as high as it was a few years ago. Employees just starting their careers in the industry still struggle to find work.
“In the first half of this year, we saw nearly 70% growth, which was a big surprise. This was primarily due to a low base, as the market has shrunk by about 50% over the past two years,” Piotr Nowosielski, CEO of Just Join IT and Rocket Jobs, told Newseria.
“These increases are primarily due to the fact that customers have realized that AI won't write the code for them, and they still need a large number of people to develop the software. We're seeing very dynamic growth in the first half of this year. In Q2, this growth dynamic is greater than in Q1.”
Companies are seeing the highest demand for specialists in Data, Java, and JavaScript (each accounting for approximately 8-9% of the total number of postings), as well as Analytics, DevOps, and Python. The most dynamic growth, especially in Q2, was seen in the artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) category.
Advertisement See also: Take part in our stock market multi-thlon! Disciplines: sprint for stocks, dive into ETFs, and push your wallet for the prize.
“Over the last two years, real salaries have fallen by as much as a third, taking into account what a programmer was actually receiving at the final stage of the recruitment interview. We have to look at both sides of this market: the salary ranges remained relatively unchanged, while the real salary was lower in real terms. Now we're seeing around a 10% increase in salaries declared by employers in the salary ranges, as well as around a 12% increase in the real salaries declared by programmers, so these rates have increased slightly, but they also underwent a significant correction and realignment,” points out the CEO of Just Join IT.
The average salary in the IT industry was PLN 22,769, 12% higher than in the same period last year (PLN 20,376). The highest-paid specializations continue to include Java (from PLN 30,000 net for B2B to PLN 41,000 gross for an employment contract), JavaScript (between PLN 22,600 for a UoP and PLN 29,000 for B2B – also recording the largest pay increases), Security, as well as IT architects, DevOps, and data analysts.
“I believe salaries won't return to the levels we were at. The market was overheated, with much greater pressure from Western technology companies, which had to spend a lot of money received from investors and hired programmers on a piece-rate basis. The fact is that the best programmers, the so-called ex-developer—a programmer who isn't just an ordinary, let's call it, code-spinner, but an engineer who thinks about solutions and implements them—can still earn very high salaries, over PLN 30,000 in the Polish market. However, these rates, especially for juniors, mid-levels, and typical seniors, have become significantly more realistic. They have stagnated in the last two years and are only starting to rise slightly for the entire market, but they are rising in line with real wages across the economy,” the expert points out.
An analysis of job offers and applications revealed that over 52% of them are aimed at seniors. However, juniors, who accounted for less than 6% of all offers, apply twice as often. They also continue to have the greatest difficulty finding employment. Experts point out that this data indicates a large influx of novice programmers, whose skills are being displaced by artificial intelligence solutions.
“Those entering the job market, not just in IT, are having a much harder time than they were two or three years ago. The IT industry is experiencing the phenomenon of unemployable juniors—people who have completed various courses and bootcamps, but it turns out that the number of job offers for them has significantly decreased, and companies are no longer looking for juniors to perform entry-level tasks; instead, they're wondering how to scale at this entry-level level using artificial intelligence,” explains Piotr Nowosielski.
While the total number of job offers for programmers increased by 68% in the first half of the year, the number of offers for juniors increased by only about 20%.
“Juniors are definitely having a harder time in the IT job market right now,” assesses the CEO of Just Join IT. “I think there's still interest because the entry threshold to start coding is much easier, thanks to solutions like Cursor, Lovable, and Replit. However, the market has changed so much that the difficulty level of actually getting a job will paradoxically increase. So, it's easier to enter the IT industry and learn to code, but that doesn't mean you'll actually get the job.”
Employers are demanding a significantly higher level of advancement than even a few years ago. They also expect juniors to possess not only the basics but also knowledge of AI tools, meticulous trend tracking, a ready-made portfolio, and the ability to act quickly. Platform experts expect that in the second half of the year, companies will compete more aggressively for seniors, while simultaneously raising the bar for juniors.
As Piotr Nowosielski emphasizes, the development of AI also affects another aspect of the IT labor market, namely recruitment itself.
” Paradoxically, with the development of AI, which is supposed to accelerate all processes, including recruitment, they have essentially doubled in length. On average, this process took about 30 days; now it's up to 60 days – recent studies show this, and this stems from the fact that approximately 20-30% of applications on the Polish market are already generated by AI. These applications are often empty, often from Asian countries, and are pure spam, making downsized recruitment teams increasingly inefficient. And here, this technology must not only assist candidates in the job market but also help recruiters process these applications,” points out the CEO of Just Join IT.
Another noticeable trend on the market is the gradual abandonment of the remote work model in favor of hybrid work, which has overtaken remote work in terms of popularity in job offers for the first time (47.1% vs. 46%).
“I believe this benefits faster, more efficient software development, and it's a trend we're already seeing overseas. Just as Silicon Valley startups were the first to implement remote-first work, now they're the first to bring people into the office for five days,” notes Piotr Nowosielski. “In Poland, a more cautious approach still prevails: three days from the office, two days remotely, or four days from the office, one day remotely. I think hybrid work will ultimately be here to stay, but in the form of four days on-site and one day remotely.”
