Techie Pay Approaches All-time High

Stony Stevenson sent in this ITNews story which opens, "Techies were paid nearly record-high hourly wages in the third quarter, according to a new report released Thursday by staffing firm Yoh. Based on data compiled from 75 Yoh field offices and 5,000 technology professionals contracted in short and long-term projects, pay increased an average of more than 5.5 percent for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared to the same period last year."

Comments

Well duh

[Reason58]

McDonald's workers were also paid more than any other time in history. If you are going to a study like this without adjusting for ever-present inflation, then of course you will constantly see new records.

Re:Well duh

[Fallen Kell]

Has the dollar inflated 5.5% in the last year? Sounds unlikely to me, but IANAEconomist.. or even informed..

No just 9.4% against the British Pound
13.2% against the Canadian Dollar
11.1% against the Euro

Need I go on? A 5.5% raise is still a 4-7% DECREASE in buying power verses the world economy.

Re:Well duh

[Anonymous Coward]

As your currency goes down, you are in fact more poor: Wealth, income and purchasing power are all lower on a globally defined basis. Your domestically defined purchasing power is indeed higher compared to other countries domestically defined purchasing power, but given the rather grotesque trade deficit you're carrying, net-net it means you're gonna pay more for stuff overall.

Granted, it also means that your assets (including labor) are cheaper on a global basis, and other countries will buy more of them when the bloodletting starts to end. But, you can't have it both ways. They will buy more of you and your stuff because, indeed, you are poorer.

In other news...

[Tackhead]

From TFA:
> Compared to the same months in 2006, hourly wages for techies in 2007 rose 6 percent in July, 4.64 percent in August, and 5.79 percent in September.

Compared to the value of the US dollar against every major currency in 2006, hourly wages for US-based techies are still down 5-10% year over year.

Except in Broadcast Engineering...

[Newer Guy]

Pay there is DROPPING about 5% a year-both in actual pay and in the amount of responsibility for the same pay. As (clueless) broadcasting groups buy more stations, they expect the existing tech. staff to assume the burden of the extra work-with no more pay or assistance. The pay used to work out to about $15K per station. Then it dropped to 12K. Now it's at about $9K, which means that the average radio broadcast engineer makes about $60K for servicing 7 stations. This many stations means that all he's doing is running around putting out fires all the time.

The Loonie is worth more than a US Dollar

[MichaelCrawford]

Thanks to the war in Iraq - it's being funded by selling Treasury bonds.

XE says the US dollar is worth about 96.6 Canadian cents.