AI Could Boost Software Engineer Productivity by 32.6%
CIO, Friday, October 2nd, 2026
NBER economists infer from stock prices that AI raised expected software engineering productivity by 32.6%.
CIO.com covers a National Bureau of Economic Research paper, 'The Macroeconomic Effect of AI: Sizing the Software Engineering Channel,' whose researchers reasoned that firms relying more on software engineers should see bigger stock gains from AI news and combined those price reactions with a model to estimate expected productivity.
They conclude that from November 2022 to December 2025, AI raised the market's expected value of software engineering productivity by the equivalent of a permanent 32.6% increase.
The article notes this is a market expectation, but a useful starting point for balancing AI tool spend against payroll.