Perennially popular programming language Python may be a fan favorite, but can you make a living as a Python developer? More to the point, how is the job market holding up for one of the world's most popular languages? As it turns out, you can't go wrong with Python – and recently, things feel very right. Digging into numbers within the Dice database, we isolated "Python developer" jobs. We also ‘cleaned’ the data so other jobs referencing the language by name were removed from this study. (We did this because some jobs list Python as a preferred skill, but those positions don’t focus on writing apps or services in the language full-time; it simply felt disingenuous to include all jobs referencing the language.) You may be unsurprised to know the Python job market is very healthy. Not only is ‘Python Developer’ one of the more popular jobs in our database, it’s also one of the steadiest, historically speaking. While many job titles and programming languages (such as Kotlin) are subject to industry whims and the decisions of large tech companies, Python weathers storms with ease, apparently unfazed by industry trends. And the past three quarters have seen a marked spike for Python jobs. As you see in the chart below, the ‘Python Developer’ job title has returned rock solid numbers from the beginning of 2016 (Q1 2016, specifically). From Q3 2017 to the second quarter of 2018, Python Developer jobs have almost doubled. (Remember, this data is normalized, so our findings here are specific to Python Developer roles. The actual counts are far higher if we include all jobs utilizing Python.) We don't yet have data for the third quarter of 2018, though our earliest dive into the dataset doesn't suggest we're going to see a precipitous drop-off. Things are still looking up! The language seems to be one that's found a use-case in just about every corner in tech, though nothing specific seems to be responsible for this recent spike. That being said, there’s one increasingly popular discipline providing a robust new avenue for Python devs everywhere: machine learning. The R programming language is specifically geared toward statistical computing, which makes it a prime candidate for machine learning jobs – but Python may be usurping it at just about every level. Speaking with Dice, Enriko Aryanto, CTO of QuanticMind, said: “R has issues with scalability. It’s a single-threaded language that runs in RAM, so it’s memory-constrained, while Python has full support for multi-threading and doesn’t have memory issues." Learning Python isn't difficult; it's easily understood and fairly verbose, and writing simple applications or services is attainable for beginners. The language is taught early in schools, and is one of the most widely used in the open source community. All told, the Python programming language is in a great position. It's already one of the most popular languages or skills around, and analysis shows its job market is steady.