A lot of headlines recently have painted federal workers as overpaid. A new survey by InformationWeek Analytics adds fuel to this claim, particularly if one compares the salaries of federal information technology workers to their private sector counterparts. In fact, findings show that federal IT workers earn much heftier paychecks than do IT workers overall.
The survey of 18,201 IT professionals -- 900 in the federal government -- found that federal IT was among the top eight industries commanding the highest salaries. For example, federal IT staffers earn a median annual salary of $98,000, while federal IT managers earn a median salary of $120,000. This contrasts with the IT industry overall, where median salaries were $87,000 for IT staffers and $115,000 for IT managers, the survey found.
The survey also found that eight industries pay median IT staff less than $80,000. Education paid the least ($61,000), followed by nonprofits ($63,000) and state ($68,000) and local governments ($70,000).
Still, federal IT workers are the only ones outearning the average. Employees in other industries, like securities and investments, metals and natural resources, biotech, financial services, electronics, energy, telecommunications and IT vendors make more than the norm.
Like federal workers, IT professionals across the board have also been affected by pay freezes. Those freezes have given way to small increases, with median total compensation rising just 0.9 percent for IT staffers and 1.9 percent for managers in 2011, the survey found. These hikes pale in comparison to those in 2001, when median raises were 8.5 percent for staff and 9.9 percent for managers.
In addition, today's top-paid IT skills are data integration, which command a median annual salary of $107,000, followed by enterprise application integration, where median salaries are $105,000. Other top-paid skills are enterprise resource planning ($102,000), security ($97,000) and application development ($96,000).
How does your salary stack up?
Brittany Ballenstedt
Brittany Ballenstedt writes Nextgov's Wired Workplace blog, which delves into the issues facing employees who work in the federal information technology sector. Before joining Nextgov, Brittany covered federal pay and benefits issues as a staff correspondent for Government Executive and served as an associate editor for National Journal's Technology Daily. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Mansfield University and originally hails from Pennsylvania. She currently lives near Travis Air Force Base, Calif., where her husband is stationed.
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