Salary Survey
15th Annual Redmond Salary Survey: Good Times Ahead?
In our 2010 salary survey, we find that IT salaries generally remained flat, but some respondents got raises -- giving rise to general optimism about salaries next year.
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The recession wreaked havoc with salaries and jobs across all segments of the U.S. workforce, and IT workers were no less immune to the effects. So maybe it's good news that we didn't see a dip in IT salaries among the readership in this 15th Redmond salary survey. Looking at the glass half full, compensation improved by $536 (or 0.63 percent) on 2009's overall average of $83,113, to a 2010 mean of $83,638 (see Chart 1. It's not much, but it's something.
"It doesn't surprise me that salaries went up, even though minimally," says Russell Young, a network administrator with a government health care company in Montana. "With the government's big push -- especially in the health-care arena -- to utilize IT more effectively, the skill sets are more in demand than ever."
Michael Hensley, a systems administrator with a Redmond, Ore., nonprofit agency, agrees with Redmond reader James A., who notes: "Salaries probably increased because companies are hiring less and trying to get more out of existing employees. Higher salaries improve retention and help keep more productive employees." [To preserve the anonymity of some respondents we cite throughout this article, we refer to them by first name and last initial only. -- Ed.]
James A. and Hensley aren't alone in their opinions. There's a similar refrain from many respondents we followed up with in the weeks after the survey. We're seeing corroboration of their observations not just in our own survey, but in recently published, external sources that show salaries in IT have been trending upward, while jobs remain scarce.
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An IT salary study just released in June by Janco Associates Inc. shows salaries ticking up slightly but remaining mostly flat: IT executives at large enterprises had a 0.97 percent increase, while those at midsize companies edged lower by 0.75 percent, for a combined 0.21 percent uptick. The Janco study also projects hiring will be weak in the next year.
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor also shows IT-based jobs being added between 2008 and 2018 at a pace of 28,660 per year. While those results come out weak in comparison to year-over-year data for computer-based jobs, the Bureau of Labor does consider these numbers to be "better than average" against the general workforce.
Michael Domingo is executive editor of MCPmag.com and hosts the Redmond Radio podcasts. Click here to e-mail the editors about "The 15th Annual Redmond Salary Survey: Good Times Ahead?"