Software Publishers NAICS 513210

Sep 10, 2025 - No Near-term “AI Jobs Bloodbath” Expected

• Distinguished Gartner VP analyst Daryl Plummer said in early September that the business and technology research company doesn’t foresee an “AI jobs bloodbath” in IT or other industries for at least five years. Just one percent of job losses today are attributable to AI, according to Plummer. He and Gartner VP analyst Alicia Mullery did predict a reduction in entry-level jobs as AI lets senior staff tackle work that they would once have assigned to juniors. The two analysts also forecast that businesses will struggle to implement AI effectively because the costs of running AI workloads often balloon.
• Revenue and margin expansion look favorable for software firms through 2029, according to Morningstar. The financial services firm expects total software revenue to increase more than 11% annually through 2029. Software industry revenue growth is derived from existing clients in the form of additional seats and new modules and from new vendors and new business formation, according to Morningstar. Pricing tends to be lumpy, as software vendors may raise prices by 10% once every three years rather than annually by 2% to 3%.

• AI and a new class of "reasoning" AI models that are computationally intensive and expensive to operate are pushing the Software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry from monthly "per seat" licenses to usage-based, pay-as-you-go pricing, according to Business Insider. It may be an economic necessity for some companies as they adjust to the cost of running AI-powered software services. A reasoning AI model is much more expensive because it doesn't just return simple responses. Reasoning models loop through steps, check their work, and do it all again — a process called inference-time compute. Every step generates new "tokens," which have to be processed. Companies are beginning to charge based on activity such as tokens consumed, queries run, automations executed, or models accessed instead of charging per user. This aligns revenue more closely with usage and ensures companies can cover their variable and rising infrastructure costs, according to Business Insider.
• Software publishers decreased prices moderately during the first half of 2025, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Software publishing industry employment and average wages for nonsupervisory employees increased slightly during the first five months of 2025, according to the BLS. Software publisher sales are forecast to grow at a 6.94% compounded annual rate from 2025 to 2029, faster than the growth of the overall economy, according to Inforum and the Interindustry Economic Research Fund, Inc.