Is the Average Age of Tech Employees Increasing?

The average age of all tech employees is steadily increasing. As Fortune reported, Pave data shows that fewer Gen Z and recent college grads make up the tech workforce.

Across 8,000+ companies in Pave’s dataset (which generally skews toward the tech sector), the average age of all employees has steadily increased from 35.1 to 36.7 over the past 33 months, and the trend appears to be continuing.

Why is the average age of tech employees increasing?

There are a few potential culprits for the shift.

First, layoffs tend to disproportionately impact more junior employees, and tech layoffs became increasingly common in the years following the interest rate hikes in 2022-2023.

Another hypothesis is the markets continue to reward profitability and efficiency more than in the low interest rate era. This potentially drives companies to focus on short-run leverage through more senior employees, rather than growing the “farm system” of new grads and younger entrants into the labor market.

Lastly, AI tooling may be disrupting a number of common entry-level roles that have traditionally been attractive entry points into the tech labor force for new grads. For example, we recently analyzed how the Sales Development Representative (SDR) role is being disrupted by AI. This is perhaps causing a hiring bias towards more senior talent. 

Is the shift in the labor force toward older, more experienced employees a temporary economic adjustment, or a permanent shift in how tech companies build their workforce?

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