Narrowing the Pay Gap

On Monday, I wrote about how company hiring managers are having a difficult time filling critical information security jobs in light of the current economic crisis.

A recent survey by Dice.com, an IT jobs Web site, reports similar findings, but it provides a bit more detail on how private sector IT salaries have played out over the past year. For example, private sector IT workers should not expect to see their salaries rise this year. More than 35 percent of recruiters and hiring managers believe salaries will hold at the same levels as last year, and 41 percent report that salaries have already dipped slightly. Seventeen percent said salaries are significantly lower than 2008, and just 7 percent report that salaries are higher than last year.

In light of this news, federal IT workers can rejoice: President Obama has proposed a 2 percent pay raise for all federal employees in fiscal 2010. And as Congress considers the federal pay raise as part of the appropriations process in the coming months, federal IT workers may see a pay raise equal to the 2.9 percent Obama proposed for military personnel, because lawmakers generally favor offering military and civilian workers the same pay raise.