IT Salaries Nearly Flat in 2010
If you're a federal information technology professional who's disappointed about the two-year across-the-board pay freeze, rest assured: Private sector IT pros have endured a second straight year of nearly flat salaries, according to a new survey by Dice.com.
Dice's 2010-2011 annual salary survey found that technology salaries increased by an average of only 0.7 percent, to $79,384, last year. Nearly half of those surveyed (49 percent) received salary increases in 2010, compared to just 36 percent who saw raises the previous year. Twenty-nine percent received bonuses, up from 24 percent of respondents in 2009, the survey found.
Even with the marginal average increase, however, tech professionals expressed slightly more satisfaction with pay, with 50 percent somewhat or very satisfied, an increase of 4 percent over the previous year. Still, nearly 40 percent of tech professionals believe they can make more money if they change employers in 2011.
For those entering the IT field, however, it appears wages have been reset lower, Dice found. For the second straight year, average salaries of IT professionals with less than two years of experience have declined to 6 percent below their peak average wages in 2008.
Technology professionals in Silicon Valley saw the largest average increase of 3 percent, raising average salaries to $99,028. Average salaries in New York ($87,298) and the Washington D.C./Baltimore area ($89,149) also inched higher in 2010, while average salaries in Atlanta ($82,944) and Philadelphia ($81,986) jumped 5 percent. Average salaries in Los Angeles dropped 4 percent to $84,551 and average salaries in Chicago declined 1 percent to $79,933, the survey found.
Meanwhile, demand for Oracle experience is up 57 percent over 2009, and the national average salary for tech pros with experience in Oracle Database is $90,914. For Oracle Application Server it is $88,063. Demand for J2EE/Java is up 50 percent, commanding an average salary of $91,060. Demand for C, C++ and C# is up 46 percent, while demand for SQL programming expertise is up 47 percent, the survey found.
Like the federal government, demand for IT project managers also is high (up 50 percent), with companies requesting project management experience in a wide variety of job postings. The average salary for project managers is $100,143, according to the survey.
How do your skills, salary and other incentives stack up? Do the survey results make you more satisfied with your government IT job, or do they make you want to jump ship for the private sector?