You and/or your sources are not successfully interpreting the BLS data. You have overlooked the reorganization of the SOC. Take a look at the computer occupat

You and/or your sources are not successfully interpreting the BLS data. You have overlooked the reorganization of the SOC. Take a look at the computer occupations major grouping (which, n.b., does not include many people who you and I think of as programmers). Here it is in 2000: http://www.bls.gov/soc/2000/soc_c0a0.htm http://www.bls.gov/soc/2000/soc_c0a0.htm Here it is in 2010: http://www.bls.gov/soc/2010/soc150000.htm http://www.bls.gov/soc/2010/soc150000.htm Note the addition of the Software Developers (Applications), Software Developers (Systems), and Web Programmers. This resulted from a recategorization of programmers and Computer System Engineers. Also, web programmers was simply disaggregated from Programmers generally. I'll save you looking up the numbers: from memory, there are about 2 million of them. You can treat some portion of them as being "poached" from the computer programming category. Most are new to the field since 1990. Net employment across the previous and successor categories is up, by several hundred thousand jobs. Your contention that the US has lost programming jobs flies in the face of material reality.