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IT Salaries Edge Up Back To 2008 Levels
tsamsoniw writes "A soon-to-be released salary survey finds that the average salary for IT professionals in the U.S. is $78,299, putting overall compensation back at January 2008 levels. More heartening: Midsize and large companies are both aiming to hire more IT pros. The midsize are seeking IT executives (such as VPs of information services and technical services), as well as programmers, database specialists, systems analysts, and voice/wireless communication pros. Enterprises are moving IT and data center operations back in-house, which means greater demand for data center managers and supervisors."
The average is going up because all the lower end IT positions are over seas mostly now, at least that is my guess. I always found these 'average' salaries to be very misleading. Because I always seem to be making below the average.
Now I just wish that *my* salary would move back up to 2008 levels. To be fair, I was laid off in 2009 and needed to change specialties in order to find work. Fortunately, I have an immediate opportunity to move up, and may be able to get myself back where I was within a year.
Please let my boss know.
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
And my compensation package in 1999 was roughly $80,000/year. Things have improved how? Those numbers are still LESS than I made 13 years ago!
Wasn't it in 1984 that someone was told to say the government increased the chocolate ration to a lower number than previously?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Yeah, with two caveats.
1) That assumes you have a job. Lots of unemployed IT people and IT people working in other professions aren't counted.
2) A lot of these jobs are in high cost of living areas like New York City or Silicon Valley. When a 1BR apartment costs north of $2000/month, $80k/yr gross doesn't seem like so much.
Your boss isn't going to go out of his way to pay you more than he thinks he needs to in order to retain you. The only person who will always have your best interests at heart is you. YOU must ask your boss for a raise and present evidence that your market value has risen to justify it.
If he doesn't pay up, jump to a new job that will. Apparently, there are some openings now.
According to the inflation rate calculator I used, the consumer price index (one measure of inflation) has increased 5.08% from 2008 to 2011.
So, on average, IT pro's are effectively paid about 5% less than in 2008.
I've noted two trends in the job market lately: the jobs are paying a good deal more, but there are a lot fewer of them. It seems counter-intuitive because an oversupply of candidates would tend to drive wages down. However, what I see happening is companies almost *want* to pay top dollar...but only because they want absolutely stellar, walk-on-water, can-do-no-wrong, all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips candidates. I'm making *more* than I was during the dot com bubble. I'm also working my ass off managing projects that would've taken a team of people to do a few years ago. They're certainly getting their money's worth, but I have no room to complain because I'm making top dollar. And that's just how they want it: I have no incentive -- and no opportunity -- to jump ship for something better paying because I'm already way above the average wage, and a less stressful position would pay me so much less that it's not worth searching for.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Arg.. Just pisses me off even more about the federal pay freeze. I'm a lead developer and project manager making $10k less than the average developer, who has no management responsibilities. It's getting harder and harder to justify staying in the public sector..
What did Canada do to screw up their economy?
The value of the basic unit of currency has little to do with economic strength. (If you doubt this, consider that a Mexican Peso is worth 7 times a Japanese Yen).
The Canadian dollar, and the Australian dollar, have a correlation to commodities. As commodity prices went up, so did the Canadian dollar.
That's not the only thing that affects the exchange rate, though. It's a supply/demand thing. Over the last 6 months, demand for the US dollar has jumped, because of the European crisis. So it isn't the Canadian dollar that has dropped so much as the US dollar that has risen.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Exactly why this type of survey is so absurd.
Comparing a work from home sysadmin's salary with an enterprise architect's salary is like trying to get an average salary for lawyers (add one public defender to a credit default swap lawyer, divide by two.)
IT jobs cover a lot of space. $78K/year is just a silly summary statistic.
So, no families?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
But do heed the advice: get off your ass and change jobs every now and then. I changed jobs twice during the crisis. Good people are always in demand. If you want more than sub-inflation raises (or no raises at all), get off your butt and see if you can find something better. With luck, you will. If you don't try, you definitely won't. As simple as that.
Salaries going "back to 2008 levels" does not take into account the benefits that you have all lost. Every one of you is paying more for health care, higher deductibles, higher co-pays. Your employers don't contribute as much to your measly 401ks that won't be nearly enough to retire on anyway.
Don't get me wrong, it's good that there are signs of life in the economy, but we've got 2 percent growth and 4 percent continual federal stimulus. If the federal government should stop the stimulus, you're going to lose ground in a hurry. This isn't going to change in 2012 or 2013 or 2014 no matter who is elected. There are structural problems in the US economy, in the WORLD economy that aren't going to change and there really isn't any path to improvement as long as a relative handful of transnational corporate entities and bank holding companies continue to act as a self-appointed world government.
You are welcome on my lawn.
WHich is why trying to use the term "IT" for all of these different jobs is stupid. They're completely different categories with no meaningful relationship. Break it into two groups (programming/architects and network admin/system admin/help desk) and you at least break it into functional groups that do the same thing (although still only marginally useful, as help desk is usually paid so much less). But doing anything across both groups at once is pointless, it only serves to confuse people.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
1. Employment levels are down, so you have to factor in all the IT workers who are either making $0, or delivering pizza. The article states that companies are continuing to replace full-time workers with contract or part-time hires.
2. Self-selection bias - those who make less are much less likely to report how much (or how little) they make;
3. Venue bias - this survey covers only mid-sized and large-sized companies -- whole swaths of people working in both smaller businesses (the majority of jobs in the economy) or the lower end of the industry are not included in these surveys, so they don't "drag the numbers down."