News
Java Developer Growth Slows Amid Economic Uncertainty, Report Finds
- By John K. Waters
- April 1, 2025
A new report released by Perforce Software finds that hiring plans for Java developers have slowed significantly heading into 2025, even as businesses continue to rely on Java to power critical applications.
Only 51.8% of surveyed organizations plan to add Java developers this year, down from 60% in 2024, according to the company's 2025 Java Developer Productivity Report, which surveyed 731 developers, team leads, and IT executives. Similarly, just 34% of respondents said they expect to increase their budgets for developer tools, a sharp decline from 42% the previous year.
Amid ongoing economic uncertainty, larger enterprises are showing more resilience. Among companies with more than 1,000 employees, 58% still plan to add Java headcount, while 36% anticipate increasing tooling budgets.
Despite budget pressures, Java continues to be a cornerstone of enterprise software, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Perforce CTO Rod Cope emphasized that productivity tools, rather than emerging technologies like AI alone, may offer near-term value by helping teams "carve out whitespace" for high-impact work.
The report also highlighted a significant shift in Java Development Kit (JDK) usage. Java 17 and Java 21—both long-term support (LTS) versions—are now the most widely used, at 61% and 45% adoption respectively. Older versions like Java 8 and Java 11 still see usage, particularly in systems slow to modernize.
Security, performance, and LTS availability were cited as top drivers for JDK upgrades, especially among larger companies. Oracle JDK remains the most-used distribution at 45%, followed by OpenJDK (35%) and Amazon Corretto (23%).
As developers face growing pressure to "do more with less," the report suggests that investments in stable tooling and modular architectures may be more beneficial than headline-grabbing AI solutions that are not yet mature enough to meaningfully reduce developer workloads.
The full report includes detailed insights on IDE usage, cloud and remote development, application architecture trends, and benchmarks for redeploy times and team productivity.
About the Author
John K. Waters is the editor in chief of a number of Converge360.com sites, with a focus on high-end development, AI and future tech. He's been writing about cutting-edge technologies and culture of Silicon Valley for more than two decades, and he's written more than a dozen books. He also co-scripted the documentary film Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance, which aired on PBS. He can be reached at [email protected].