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IT (And Other) Salaries On The Rise In The U.S.
pertinax18 writes "CNN Money is reporting that salaries for most college grads are on the rise once again. Especially interesting to collegiate (and other) /. readers may be the 4.1% increase in pay for CS grads, and 10.7% increases in pay for others in the field. From the article: 'If those numbers sound enticing, it's probably because computer science graduates are long overdue for a pay increase. "They haven't seen an increase since 2001 and this is the first year, in all four reports, that they showed an increase," Koncz says.' Are things finally starting to look up for us?"
Show me places in the industry or people who have received raises. Not to sound bitter, but I know not a single person in my circle of friends and business associates who've said they're getting raises.
:(
It's more about cuts and firings lately
"It's not stealing if you don't get caught!"
While jobs are on the decline.
- A
A year ago, getting an IT job was hard as hell. Countless resumes, postings and searchings EVENTUALLY netted me a DBA position.
In the last few months, I've started getting emails randomly from recruiters who've seen my resumes posted. I haven't been looking, haven't updated it. One of the opportunities struck me, so I took it. No problems. I've been offered more jobs in the past month - without looking for anything - than I could even get close to a year ago.
Inflation is at 2.65% right now.
/ CurrentInflation.asp
http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate
w3rd.
Average salaries may be on the increase, but total jobs in the IT field are not. It's getting *more* difficult to find a job; the glut of IT folks out there (and it *is* a glut) means employers can sit on their haunches while waiting for that "perfect candidate" who has exactly 3 years as an Oracle DBA and 5+ years experience with ADO.NET. (Yes, I've seen job offers exactly like that -- has ADO.NET even been *around* for 5 years?).
There are *ZERO* entry level jobs on the market at the moment. So the rest of us who just got out of college, even if we racked up experience with internships or other on-the-side jobs, are screwed unless we can lie convincingly in our interviews. If we can even *get* an interview, that is.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Depends on where you work. In central Florida, $50,000 / yr is a pretty good salary. In San Francisco, $50,000 / yr is less than the janitor gets paid.
National averages are pretty useless.
Maybe slightly off-topic, but why are there no Electrical Engineering numbers on the list?
Has the BSEE degree been absorbed by BSCS, BSME, and BSIE, while I've been in the basement?
Unemployment in the IT sector is up
When those who claim to be unemployed are asked "Are you actively looking for a job?" by anyone other than their unemployment assistant, the numbers who answer "no" are fairly high, those people are skewing the official tallies of the unemployed.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Agreed, averages may be useful to spot trends, but never compare your actual salary to them.
Programmers in NYC get 80K per year just so they can keep up with the increased housing, cost of living, etc. Programmers in the Midwest get 35K. Same quality of life, just different numbers. Take a look at these numbers to make a comparison by region.
Comes from employers/tax returns (I believe), so will probably be more accurate than surveys which have voluntary participation.
IT salaries have seen a big boom in India in the last 2 years !!. The intended joke just doesn't work.
bachelor's degree in medieval history and philosophy
"A degree is worth nothing. The grad's attiude and ability to produce is what sets their salary."
I disagree. A grad's ability to produce in a CS job is likely to be tied into skills learned in the process of getting the degree. Additionally, the mere act of completing all the classes necessary to get the degree shows some level of drive/motivation. If you had the choice between a person with a degree and a person right out of high school, both with zero experience, and both with a positive attitude, which are you more likely to choose?
It should be noted that the H-1b quota was reduced in fall of 2003(back to 65,000/year). Now last year congress expanded the L-1 program--but there were clauses in that expansion that made it difficult for companies to take advantage of that program until after the election. L-1 employees need to work for a company for something like a year before the company and use them for work in the US. So this effect-to the extent it is real(i.e. it may just be movement of jobs into high priced areas), may well be temporary.
Are you in the telecomm industry? If so, you would have heard of the so-called "CLEC"s (Competive Local Exchange Carriers) that were to compete with the big telecom boys. As soon as Bush was elected, they went out of business... because the smart money knew that Bush would support the incumbent big firms against them... just like he sabotaged the Microsoft antitrust trial. As went the CLECs, so went the telecomm infrastructure startups who were building innovative equipment that the CLECs would have bought, but that the ILECs have no interest in buying, because they have a monopoly anyway.
It is no accident that the bust coincided with Bush's election. Without Bush, there still would have been a dot-com bust, but other sectors would not have been as badly affected.
It is also no accident that oil prices, after stagnating for pretty much the entire Clinton years, started skyrocketing after Bush's election. It is his priority to keep gas prices high. For every cent in gas price hikes, the Oil industry makes millions of dollars. And guess which industry forms Bush's personal financial base.
Magnus.
You are (politely speaking) misinformed. CPI-U (which the parent linked) includes both energy and food components. Don't believe me? See the FAQ and the most recent (detailed) release. Milk and gas are clearly included.
"If I am such a genius, how come that I am drunk and lost in the desert with a bullet in my ass?" --Otto (Malcom ITM)
As people are fond of saying: "You must be new here..." (Not just to /., but to the planet Earth. ;-)
It's for the same reason that leaders (in the U.S.A., and in other countries, and even the PHB down the hall from your cube) will claim credit for economic upturns during their reign, while claiming that any and all economic downturns were caused by:
Leaders in power like to claim credit for good things, and avoid responsibility for bad things. Opponents of leaders in power like to assign blame for bad things, and claim responsibility for good things (or at least deny that the leader may have had a role in the good things).
Welcome to the world of carbon-based Terran life forms. For further study, may I recommend reading a long-running classic field study of this planet's society, conducted by the noted sociologist, Scott Adams. While the studies focus primarily on interactions within hierarchical corporate institutions, you may find them illustrative as you attempt to understand the political systems you encounter on your survey of our planet.
Live long and prosper, or whatever the appropriate greeting is on your homeworld.
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
Corporate profits are at an all time high. See this chart. From the link:
But with the end of the recession in late 2001,* corporate profits jumped enormously. And they have continued to rise as the lousy labor market has dragged down wages and salaries while greatly-increased productivity has driven value added per worker way, way up.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.
While it's nice to know IT salaries are increasing in the US, it's definately not happening in the UK or Europe.
I'm currently looking for a IT job and the salaries are the same or lower than I was paid in 2001. At my last job I didn't get a pay increase during the three years I was there, and I don't know anyone who has received a pay rise.
People have commented the rise is only because all the low paid jobs have been outsourced from the US. In the UK/Europe every IT job has gone - experienced/mid-level/junior the lot. In fact the majority of jobs in the UK are listed as entry level jobs because they're paying peanuts (the same amount of money I was getting in 1997).
The UK and Europe has lost out particularly badly because we're playing 'piggy in the middle'. The high-skill jobs are in the states, the low-paid jobs are in India/China and the UK/Europe gets nothing. The UK doesn't invest enough to get the high-skill jobs and is too expensive for the low pay stuff.
Second, home energy costs make up 3.83% of the CPI budget, auto fuel makes up 3.25%, dairy makes up 0.84% of the budget, and all food makes up 15.38% of the budget. Assuming a $2,000/month budget, this translates to $76.60 a month for home energy, $65 for auto fuel, $16.80 for dairy, and $307.60 for all food. None of those figures look too terribly out of line to me. Specifically, which one do you object to?
Third, the BLS table shows dairy up 10.4% since August 2003, and auto fuel up 16.5% over the same period. I calculate the price rise from the USDA numbersto be about 23%, and the Department of Energy has fuel prices up 15.9%. Granted, the milk number looks skewed, but the DOE numbers are actually higer for fuel costs.
I will concede that the CPI numbers aren't perfect; no measure of "inflation" can be. But, to insinuate they are cooked or are made up is really tenuous.
"If I am such a genius, how come that I am drunk and lost in the desert with a bullet in my ass?" --Otto (Malcom ITM)
Good luck with that plan.
No kidding.
Maybe he'll get them to release enough to balace out the $0.50 / gallon gas tax increase he wants to impose (yeah, right). I'm sure that will really help the poor and cause the cost of goods to drop since EVERYTHING is shipped by truck eventually.