AI as good as GPT-4, OpenAI's best model in 2023, got over 200 times cheaper in two years. Job adverts for America's software developers are still 23% below 2020, but up 23% since March 2025.

Name: Software job adverts (charted by MacroSnaps)
Creator: Indeed Hiring Lab via FRED, Epoch AI (2026)
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Software job adverts77(Sep 26)Price of GPT-4-level AI$0.18 per million tokens(Sep 26)

Orange line: job adverts for software developers in the US on the jobs site Indeed, with February 2020 set to 100. Dark line: the cheapest price for an AI as good as GPT-4, in dollars per million tokens, the chunks of text AI is billed by (about 750,000 words). No cheaper model has been shown to match it since February 2025.

Why this is happening

The hopeful view, from the writer Ezra Klein: when something gets much cheaper, we use far more of it (economists call this the Jevons paradox). Cheap software means a small shop or a podcast can afford its own, so the demand for programmers could grow.
The worried view, from Bill Gates: longer-lasting tyres did not make people drive more, they just meant fewer tyre workers. And if AI can do the whole job, the extra demand goes to AI, not to people.
The big fall in adverts came before AI could write much code. It was the end of the pandemic hiring boom, when tech firms had over-hired, plus higher interest rates.

The take

So far the cheaper-means-more rule clearly holds for AI itself: it got 200 times cheaper and spending on it keeps rising. Whether it holds for programmers is still open. Their job adverts have risen 23% since March 2025, even as AI got better at writing code. If they keep rising, Klein is right; if they stall, Gates is.

Source: Indeed Hiring Lab via FRED, Epoch AI (2026)

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  <img src="https://macrosnaps.app/charts/jevons-ai.png" alt="Orange line: job adverts for software developers in the US on the jobs site Indeed, with February 2020 set to 100. Dark line: the cheapest price for an AI as good as GPT-4, in dollars per million tokens, the chunks of text AI is billed by (about 750,000 words). No cheaper model has been shown to match it since February 2025." width="640" style="max-width:100%;height:auto">
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  Chart: <a href="https://macrosnaps.app/c/jevons-ai">MacroSnaps</a>,
  <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a>. Source: Indeed Hiring Lab via FRED, Epoch AI (2026).
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Cites MacroSnaps for the chart. For the numbers themselves, cite the source below.

MacroSnaps (2026). "AI as good as GPT-4, OpenAI's best model in 2023, got over 200 times cheaper in two years. Job adverts for America's software developers are still 23% below 2020, but up 23% since March 2025." Edition No. 87, 6 October 2026. https://macrosnaps.app/c/jevons-ai

Permanent link: https://macrosnaps.app/c/jevons-ai

The underlying data

MacroSnaps drew this chart. The numbers in it are published by Indeed Hiring Lab via FRED, Epoch AI (2026). Their terms, not ours, govern the underlying data.