This market is necessarily slightly subjective. I will be tentatively operationalizing the question as:

• The median (CPI-adjusted) salary for most software engineers dropping to ~50% below the 2021 all-time-high, OR

• The number of software engineers in the United States dropping by ~50%, OR

• Some combination of the above of the same significance (e.g. 25% salary drop + 25% dropout).

I will probably be looking at the BLS summaries or the levels.fyi end-of-year report unless someone in the comments suggests a better source.

If the people who create software, who formerly called themselves Software Engineers, start calling themselves something else ("AI prompter"/"prompt engineer"), I will track that in the population statistics as well.