Is it really? I only have two direct data points, but I (government contractor) and my brother (large company) are both still fully employed with no immediate risk of unemployment, reduction in salary, etc.
Just look at the numbers. 20% unemployment, while horrific in both human and economic terms, also implies 80% employment. When nearly everyone in the hospitality industry is out of a job, I have to think that some other industry is doing relatively better or the numbers would be even worse.
There's going to be a lag but software is an expense to the real-world companies and consumers. Our revenues don't materialize from the ether. Not to even mention what any VC-reliant companies are going to face when their runway is over.
You may have a point with the gov't part, but just because a business is large doesn't mean they're immune (see GM for an easy example). All the money comes from somewhere, so it will depend on the business. My company is pretty big, but the businesses that are our customers are all feeling a huge amount of pain right now as their sales completely tanked. We're doing everything we can to help them stay afloat so we get something, but there's no way this revenue problem doesn't come to us sooner or later.
Just go look on Twitter, in the Clojure hashtag at least, something that rarely sees people needing jobs, there have been a hire me thread, a several individual posts for people asking work, and more and more post about people getting laid off. This will just continue to increase as the virus does it's thing.
I doubt that software eng unemployment is at 10% right now. Looking at BLS data from previous recessions shows that software eng doesn't get hit nearly as hard as other professions.
