the "learn to code" campaign began ramping up in 2013. If you started undergrad in 2016 you would've graduated right into the covid market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learn_to_Code#Policy_impact

I think the hype peaked around 2016 where Democrats were portrayed as out of touch for saying laid off coal miners could just "learn to code". By 2019 it was a cliché used to mock laid off journalists on Twitter.

2008 had ~30k CS graduates.

2015 had ~50k CS graduates.

2021 had ~100k CS graduates.

You can extrapolate the rest.

This is a great question that rarely gets answered. It’s partially that a ton of student students went to school for computer science because they saw how much money could be made, another fraction is people that switched into software from related fields, maybe with a boot camp or something.

Anecdotally, our firm's Covid hires were just okay. The recent hires are better. So my hunch is the weaker CS candidates were able to get jobs back during Covid, while today, they are left out.

It didn't. The elites never want to admit that they have failed to efficiently use capital for the last 40 years. It's always the fault of workers that should never be trusted. Just continue trusting the elites as they ruined US manufacturing jobs, surely the same institutions won't fail the workers again!