People talk about this topic in two extremes. Programming schools promise a job in six months, while forums claim that the market is completely closed to newcomers. Fresh data confirms neither the first nor the second, and the real picture turns out to be much more interesting.

The Figure That Contradicts the Common Opinion

According to a survey conducted among more than four thousand specialists in the spring of 2026, interns and juniors were the most active group in the job search, since seventy-seven percent of them were looking for a job. And it was for them that the search most often ended successfully, meaning that sixty-five percent of those who were looking for a job found one. For comparison, among middle and senior specialists, this figure was forty-seven percent each, and it worsened over the year. That is, the claim that newcomers are not being hired does not correspond to the data. The difficulties are currently greater precisely in the middle level, not at the entry level.

But There Is a Nuance That Changes Everything

The overall figures hide the main thing, namely that competition is distributed extremely unevenly between fields. The average competition on the platform is approximately twenty-six applications per vacancy. In frontend development, this figure reached one hundred and thirty-two applications per position, and this is a record.

In C++ development, competition is nine applications per vacancy, while the number of positions doubled over the year, from approximately fifty-six to one hundred and eight. In marketing, competition is fourteen applications, and in human resources it is twenty-four. The difference between the most competitive and the least competitive field is approximately fourteen times. That is, the question is not whether it is possible to enter IT, but exactly where you are entering. A person who chose a field based on the popularity of courses competes with one hundred and thirty others for each vacancy. A person who chose based on the state of the market competes with nine.

Where People Are Actually Hired Without Experience

Data on actual hiring shows a different picture from the number of vacancies. The largest number of people without experience are hired in manual testing, which accounts for approximately twelve percent of all such hires, and in frontend development, with a figure of about nine percent. They are followed by marketing, technical support, and Python development. In terms of dynamics, hiring of Python developers increased by approximately twenty percent, while hiring of full-stack developers increased by approximately thirty-five percent. At the same time, hiring of project managers decreased by approximately twenty-three percent. The best chances of employment were recorded in fields related to customer acquisition and security. The worst were in analytics and design.

An Important Warning

The number of vacancies without experience requirements is growing, since in 2025 recruiters published approximately twenty percent more of them than a year earlier. But there is a detail that is worth understanding. Vacancies increased, while hiring did not, and this indicates that even for positions without formal experience requirements, candidates who nevertheless have this experience are being hired. In practice, this means that a label indicating no experience requirements does not make a vacancy truly entry-level, and you have to compete with people who have already done something.

What Artificial Intelligence Changed

The number of new people entering the field is not decreasing, but the requirements for them are changing.

Routine tasks are increasingly being automated, and that is why newcomers are now expected not to quickly perform simple tasks, but to be able to think, ask the right questions, and evaluate the result.

Companies are interested not in the ability to compete with tools, but in the ability to work with them effectively, meaning understanding where automation produces results and where human context, decisions, and responsibility are needed. The practical conclusion for a newcomer is that the ability to use these tools has become a basic skill rather than an advantage, and I wrote separately about how to do this thoughtfully.

About Money

The average starting salary of graduates in 2025 was approximately seven hundred and fifteen dollars.

This is a guideline, not a guarantee, and it differs noticeably between fields and types of companies. Another fact is also indicative, since forty-four percent of specialists who were looking for a job lowered their salary expectations. That is, the market remains on the side of employers.

How Long It Actually Takes

Among the difficulties of the job search, specialists themselves most often name high competition, a small number of vacancies, and a long hiring process with many stages of interviews and long pauses between them.

This means that even a successful search stretches over months, and it is worth planning accordingly.

A realistic approach is not to quit your current job for the sake of studying, but to combine the two, since a financial cushion is needed here not for three months, but for a much longer period.

Where the Market Is Moving

Among the twenty companies that were most actively looking for specialists at the beginning of 2026, seven were related to defense technologies. This means the emergence of an entire segment that was insignificant just a few years ago, and for a person choosing a field, this is worth taking into account. The total number of vacancies is also growing, since in the first quarter of 2026 there were approximately twenty-three thousand of them, which is twenty-three percent more than in the same period of the previous year. But the number of candidates is also growing in parallel, and that is why the feeling of difficulty remains despite the growth of the market.

What Follows From This in Practice

Choose a field based on data about competition, not on the popularity of courses, since this is where the difference by several times lies. Do not rely on the label indicating no experience requirements, but create your own projects, since at the start they replace commercial experience. Plan for the search to take months, not weeks, and do not leave your previous source of income. Learn to work with automation tools as a basic skill, not as a separate specialty. Look toward fields where demand is growing faster than the number of candidates, even if they seem less fashionable. Use platforms where there are separate categories for beginners, since on general platforms your applications get lost among thousands of others.

Summary

Entering IT in 2026 is realistic, and the statistics confirm this, since newcomers have the highest rate of successful employment among all levels. But this fact alone guarantees nothing, since everything is determined by the choice of field, and the difference in competition between the most popular and the least competitive segment is approximately fourteen times. That is, the main decision you make is not when you choose courses, but when you choose exactly which field to enter, and it is worth doing this based on market data, not advertising.


Sources

DOU survey on the labor market, conducted in March-April 2026 among more than 4,700 specialists. Djinni vacancy analytics. Publications by Speka, Finance.ua, Scroll.media