Layoffs Up, Ads Unbowed: US Software Engineers Are Still Advertised $229k in San Francisco (June 2026)

The headlines and the help-wanted ads are telling two different stories.

US tech layoffs topped roughly 142,000 jobs in the first five months of 2026, with artificial intelligence cited as the leading driver and cuts at profitable companies including Oracle (~30,000) and Meta (~8,000) among the largest (TechTimes). Yet on ResuMinder's live US job board this June, the employers who disclose pay are still putting big numbers on software-engineering ads: a typical advertised midpoint of $229,000 in San Francisco, $197,950 in Austin, and $194,750 in New York.

Both things are true at once. Here is what the advertised numbers actually say — and, just as importantly, what they don't.

The macro backdrop (this is context, not our data)

The broader labor market has held up better than the layoff headlines suggest. US employers added 172,000 nonfarm jobs in May 2026, well above the roughly 80,000 economists expected, with unemployment at 4.3% and average hourly earnings of $37.53, up 3.4% over the year (CNBC; BLS Employment Situation). Health care was among the strongest hiring sectors in that report.

But the raise may not feel like one. Wages and salaries rose 3.4% over the year while real, inflation-adjusted compensation stayed roughly flat (BLS ECI). So the AI layoff wave, a still-hiring economy, and stagnant real wages are all happening together. That is the backdrop our advertised numbers sit against — and every figure in this paragraph is third-party context, not ResuMinder data.

The software-engineer paradox

This is where the layoff-vs-pay tension is sharpest. Among postings with a solid sample (n≥20), advertised software-engineer pay holds up:

• San Francisco — $229,000 median (n=31; middle 50% runs $195,250–$246,250)
• Austin — $197,950 median (n=82; the deepest sample of the three)
• New York — $194,750 median (n=20; $182,500–$202,750)

San Francisco's premium is real but narrower than its reputation suggests — only about a 16% advertised edge over Austin and roughly 18% over New York. So even as AI gets blamed for tens of thousands of tech cuts, the senior roles employers are still advertising — and disclosing pay for — cluster firmly in the high-$100Ks to high-$200Ks. Two readings fit: companies are trimming headcount while paying up for the specific talent they keep hiring, and the ads that survive to a public salary range skew toward well-funded employers.

Software engineering isn't even the top advertised number everywhere. In Austin, security-engineer roles advertise a $189,000 midpoint (n=21) and product-manager roles $189,950 (n=59). In San Francisco, data-analyst ($212,000, n=28) and product-manager ($209,375, n=26) ads also clear $200k.

A handful of figures are indicative only because the samples are thin (n<20) and shouldn't be leaned on: Austin data scientist ~$248,825 (n=10), Austin project manager ~$210,300 (n=13), Seattle software engineer ~$193,517 (n=10), San Francisco finance analyst ~$167,950 (n=11), Seattle nurse ~$124,243 (n=10) and New York project manager ~$169,738 (n=8). Treat these as directional, not definitive.

The tech-versus-health-care gulf

Now the contrast. In the same New York market where software engineers advertise $194,750, nurse roles advertise a midpoint of just $100,239 (n=62) — a robust sample, and almost exactly half the engineering figure. The middle 50% of NY nurse ads runs from $57,579 to $108,930.

That matters because health care was among the strongest hiring sectors in the May report (BLS Employment Situation). High demand is not translating into tech-level advertised pay. "Big-city six figures" plainly does not mean "$200k for everyone."

City pay at a glance

Across all roles, our median advertised salaries (midpoint of the posted range) by city, as of June 9, 2026:

• San Francisco — $199,950 (n=645)
• Austin — $189,000 (n=549)
• Atlanta — $176,100 (n=283)
• Miami — $152,175 (n=128)
• New York — $142,998 (n=642)
• Chicago — $141,448 (n=86)
• Seattle — $128,062 (n=101)
• Los Angeles — $120,550 (n=163)
• Denver — $114,771 (n=35)
• Boston — $85,000 (n=80)

The surprise is Austin, whose all-role midpoint sits within about $11,000 of San Francisco and comfortably ahead of New York. New York's number ($142,998) lands well below San Francisco's despite comparable engineering ads — its quartiles span a huge $95,640 to $230,000, because a six-figure software role and a ~$100k nursing role sit in the same dataset. New York's figure isn't low; it's diverse. The lesson: which roles disclose pay shapes a city's number as much as the roles themselves. Denver's small sample (n=35) and Boston's low figure both warrant caution.

Advertised is not earned — read this before you quote a number

Here is the part that matters most. The economy-wide average hourly wage of $37.53 works out to about $78,062 a year at full-time hours — but that is our own illustrative arithmetic ($37.53 × 2,080), not a BLS-published annual figure, and it measures the actual paycheck across every US worker, industry and region.

Our city midpoints are a different animal entirely. They are advertised ranges — an opening bid, often skewed high — drawn only from the slice of employers who post pay. That disclosed set tilts hard toward big metros and toward high-paying tech and professional roles, partly because US pay-transparency laws in states like New York, California, Washington, Colorado and Illinois push employers there to publish ranges in the first place. So when our San Francisco median reads ~$199,950 next to a national earned figure near ~$78,062, those are not comparable measures — one is a sticker price in a few expensive cities, the other is the real paycheck across the whole workforce.

The practical takeaway for job seekers: if the layoff coverage has you assuming the market collapsed, the advertised data pushes back — employers are still posting strong numbers for senior engineering and product. But use these midpoints to calibrate your ask within a specific named city and role, not to conclude "the US average is six figures." It isn't.

Methodology

Source. ResuMinder live, active US-city job postings, excluding crawl-excluded bulk listings, as of June 2026 (snapshot June 9, 2026). "Advertised salary" is the midpoint of the advertised range on each posting, filtered to a plausible $20,000–$500,000 annual band. p50 is the median; p25/p75 are the lower/upper quartiles. Figures cover only these ten named cities and do not represent the US as a whole: San Francisco, New York, Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle, Chicago, Boston and Denver.

Sample sizes (n) are shown throughout. City samples range from n=645 (San Francisco) down to n=35 (Denver). Any role figure with n<20 is flagged indicative and should be treated as directional only.

Advertised vs. earned. These are advertised salaries, not actual pay. They reflect what employers post, which tends to run higher than typical realized earnings, and they say nothing about bonuses, equity or acceptance rates. The $37.53/hour BLS average — and the ~$78,062 full-time-equivalent derived from it — is economy-wide actual earnings across all workers and industries, so any comparison here is illustrative, not like-for-like.

Disclosed-pay and transparency skew. Only postings that disclose a salary are counted. US pay-transparency laws (for example in New York, California, Washington, Colorado and Illinois) push employers in those markets to publish ranges, which tilts the disclosed set toward those states and toward tech and professional roles. As a result, our big-city medians are not "the US average," and they over-represent the highest-paying corners of the labor market.

The layoffs and macro context. The ~142,000 tech-layoffs figure, the AI-as-driver framing, and the macro labor numbers (payrolls, unemployment, hourly earnings, wage growth) are third-party context, attributed to the sources linked above — not ResuMinder data. Only the advertised-salary figures are ours.