Average tech salary increase of 1.7 percent is less than 2006 increase of 5.2
percent
Silicon Valley Remains Tech's Highest Paying Metro Area
Experienced Managers Receive Largest Pay Raises
NEW YORK, Jan. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Dice, the leading career site
for technology and engineering professionals, today announced the results of
its 2007 Annual Salary Survey. The survey of more than 19,000 technology
professionals found that average IT salaries in the U.S. increased 1.7 percent
to $74,570 in 2007, with experienced technology managers seeing the largest
increases. The complete survey results from Dice.com, a Dice Holdings, Inc.
company, (NYSE: DHX), illustrate key technology industry trends and a slower
overall growth in salaries versus last year. Other findings from the survey
include:
-- Continued strong salary growth in Silicon Valley, as well as other tech
centers including Boston and Atlanta;
-- IT Managers received the biggest salary increases, including Project
Managers (5.0 percent) and MIS Managers (7.8 percent);
-- The Government/Defense and Computer Software industries both grew
faster than average (2.8 percent), while the Banking/Financial industry
remained virtually flat (0.6 percent increase) after an 8.5 percent
increase in 2006;
-- An increase in the gender gap to 11.9 percent (vs. 9.7 percent in 2006)
as women's salaries held steady while their male counterparts
experienced a 2.4 percent increase;
-- Satisfaction remained high among tech workers: more than 50 percent of
respondents are happy with their salaries.
Tech salaries have slowly, but steadily increased over the last five years
since average salaries declined in the early part of the decade. In 2007,
average tech salaries increased 1.7 percent, following a 5.2 percent increase
in 2006. 2006's increase was driven by an almost 9 percent climb in the
average contractor salary. In 2007, contractors still had the largest gains at
3.7 percent (for a salary of $93,017) while full-time workers experienced a
1.7 percent rise ($72,003). Technology professionals continued to be in high
demand in 2007, with an annual average unemployment rate of 2.1 percent,
ranking far below the national annual average of 4.6 percent, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"While technology professionals experienced overall slower salary growth
in 2007 than in 2006, the traditional technology hot beds of Silicon Valley,
Boston, and Atlanta saw better than average salary growth, and IT Managers saw
strong salary increases," said Scot Melland, Chairman, President and CEO of
Dice Holdings, Inc. "Technology workers remain among the highest paid
employees, especially those with management experience and hard-to-find
skills. Additionally, the majority are satisfied with their compensation."
Top Paying Skills and Experience
IT managers are increasingly in high demand, and their salaries reflect
this. Dice.com job postings seeking a "project manager" or "project
management" have grown by 25 percent since January 2007 and by 50 percent
since January 2006. For the first time in the Dice Annual Salary Survey, two
titles averaged more than $100,000, with Project Managers joining IT
Management in the $100,000+ club. Project managers saw their salaries rise by
5.0 percent in 2007. MIS managers' salaries increased approximately 7.8
percent to $88,934.
Technology professionals possessing certain hard-to-find skills reported
higher salaries. For instance, ETL - Extract, Transform and Load ($96,559),
ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning ($95,589) and SOAP - Simple Object Access
Protocol ($95,387) were the highest paid skills. In 2007, UNIX Solaris was the
top paying operating systems skill ($90,321), while VPN - Virtual Private
Network ($72,703) was the highest paying networking skill, and JBoss ($92,518)
was the top application server skill.
Tech workers age 40 and over had the highest salary increases at
approximately 2.3 percent, while entry-level workers, with a year or less
experience, saw their 13.2 percent increase from 2006 give way to a 2.3
percent salary decline in 2007. However, entry level tech workers still fared
better than many other entry level positions in other industries, as they took
home an average of $41,457, which is higher than the Bureau of Labor
Statistics median income for full-time workers of $36,140.
The larger the company, the larger the salary increases, as companies with
more than 1,000 employees had the greatest increases (2.3 percent) and
employees at companies with less than 50 employees reported a 1.8 percent
decline in salaries.
Gender Gap
Women's salaries held steady in 2007 with an average salary of $67,507.
Over the same time period, men's salaries increased 2.4 percent to $76,582.
Consequently, the gender gap widened to 11.9 percent vs. 9.7 percent last
year.
The gender gap is smaller among consultants. Female consultants ($86,499)
earned significantly more than their female full-time employee counterparts
($65,103) and have a more narrow salary gap with male consultants ($94,996) at
8.9 percent.
Lower skilled positions such as technical support and systems
administrators had a smaller gender gap. Women with 1-5 years of experience
saw the smallest gender gap (approximately 2.3 percent) while women with more
than 15 years of experience had the largest gap (11.3 percent); hence, women
age 40-49 also saw the largest gender gap (16.4 percent).
There is some good news for female IT professionals - Project Managers now
make $100,436, which marks the first time that females in this position have
averaged more than $100,000. This position also compares relatively favorably
to male counterparts, who earn $101,569. The highest paid industry for women
mirrors the overall survey, with banking and finance coming in tops ($74,935).
Computer software ($72,651) and telecommunications ($72,122) round out the top
three industries. Silicon Valley is also a lucrative destination for women.
With an $84,192 average salary, this represents the top paying geographical
area for females as well as males. Women in Atlanta saw the greatest increase
(5.4 percent), while women in Philadelphia experienced the greatest decline
(6.1 percent). Females in Philadelphia saw a large increase in 2006.
Geography
Tech pros in Silicon Valley continue to cash in with the highest salaries
($93,876) and the highest percentage increase (3.95 percent). Boston is the
second highest paid metro area ($83,465) and has the second largest salary
increase (3.93 percent). Baltimore/Washington, D.C., came in third ($81,750),
while Los Angeles ($81,039) and New York ($80,770) rounded out the top five
highest paying tech cities. Conversely, Phoenix and San Diego saw the largest
declines (5.0 percent and 4.3 percent respectively). Both cities saw large
increases last year.
Industry
E-commerce workers continued to see the largest salary increases, even
after 2006's 14 percent gain, pocketing an additional 4.6 percent in 2007.
Government/Defense and Computer Software saw healthy increases (both at 2.8
percent) this year, and with the fallout from the credit crisis, the
Banking/Financial industry not surprisingly experienced minimal growth (0.6
percent increase).
Satisfaction
More than 50 percent of the technology workers surveyed are satisfied with
their salaries, with 14 percent categorizing themselves as very satisfied and
39 percent somewhat satisfied. Those who were very satisfied earned an average
of $93,065. The 11 percent of respondents who replied that they are very
dissatisfied had average salaries of $51,560.
Survey Methodology
The Dice Salary Survey was administered online among registered Dice job
seekers and visitors between August 22 and November 15, 2007, and there were
19,026 participants. Respondents were invited to participate in the survey
through a notification on the Dice home page, and registered job seekers were
sent an email invitation. A cookie methodology was used to ensure that there
was no duplication of responses between or within the various sample groups,
and duplicate responses from a single email address were removed.
Dice currently lists more than 90,000 permanent, contract and consulting
jobs nationwide for a wide variety of positions from programmers, software
engineers and system administrators to CIOs and other technology
professionals.
Table 1: Tech Salaries, 2005 - 2007
2006 -
2007
%
2005 2006 2007 Change
U.S. Average $69,700 $73,308 $74,570 1.72%
Bank / Financial /
Insurance $76,092 $82,504 $82,961 0.55%
Computer Software $74,730 $77,582 $79,756 2.80%
Telecommunications $72,430 $78,003 $77,312 -0.89%
Government / Defense $69,078 $75,086 $77,187 2.80%
Medical /
Pharmaceutical $71,714 $72,717 $74,689 2.71%
Manufacturing $66,732 $71,878 $73,470 2.21%
Internet Services $65,426 $71,854 $71,538 -0.44%
Computer Hardware $66,462 $69,987 $70,740 1.08%
Retail / Mail Order /
E-Commerce $55,909 $63,830 $66,782 4.62%
Table 2: Percent by which Women Earn Less
Than Men by Industry, 2007
Bank / Financial / Insurance -12.25%
Computer Hardware -10.91%
Computer Software -11.09%
Government / Defense -10.14%
Internet Services -7.83%
Manufacturing -6.42%
Medical / Pharmaceutical -12.96%
Retail / Mail Order / E-Commerce -15.24%
Telecommunications -8.20%
Table 3: Metro Area Salaries, 2005 - 2007
2006 -
2007
%
2005 2006 2007 Change
Silicon Valley $85,430 $90,310 $93,876 3.95%
Boston $79,211 $80,308 $83,465 3.93%
Baltimore/
Washington D.C. $75,593 $79,911 $81,750 2.30%
Los Angeles $73,911 $79,583 $81,039 1.83%
New York $76,382 $80,006 $80,770 0.95%
Seattle $73,105 $79,787 $79,636 -0.19%
Denver $74,823 $77,317 $77,846 0.68%
Dallas/Ft. Worth $71,494 $74,656 $76,560 2.55%
Chicago $71,496 $75,154 $76,407 1.67%
San Diego $72,163 $79,416 $75,994 -4.31%
Atlanta $73,684 $72,323 $74,822 3.46%
Philadelphia $71,881 $72,786 $74,442 2.28%
Hartford $72,265 $71,796 $73,372 2.20%
Houston $68,358 $71,526 $72,733 1.69%
Phoenix $70,023 $74,976 $71,246 -4.97%
Detroit $64,154 $67,080 $67,271 0.28%
Table 4: Average Salary by Years of Experience, 2005 - 2007
2006 -
2007
%
2005 2006 2007 Change
Less than 1 year $37,471 $42,414 $41,457 -2.26%
1 - 2 years $41,229 $46,935 $47,648 1.52%
3 - 5 years $52,363 $55,922 $58,037 3.78%
6 - 10 years $68,355 $72,707 $73,449 1.02%
11 - 14 years $80,933 $83,907 $86,426 3.00%
More than 15 Years $86,332 $90,125 $93,107 3.31%
Table 5: Average Salary by Title, 2005-2007
2006 -
2007
%
2005 2006 2007 Change
IT Management (CEO,
CIO, CTO, VP, Dir.,
Strategist, Architect) $102,326 $106,272 $107,830 1.47%
Project Manager $93,009 $96,475 $101,292 4.99%
MIS Manager $82,824 $82,510 $88,934 7.79%
Developer: Systems $72,732 $78,476 $88,361 12.60%
Database Administrator $81,301 $85,441 $85,092 -0.41%
Software Engineer $78,807 $83,524 $84,122 0.72%
Business Analyst $77,158 $82,288 $84,101 2.20%
Developer: Database $73,768 $79,911 $83,163 4.07%
Developer: Applications $73,636 $78,037 $79,421 1.77%
Developer: Client/Server $75,941 $74,602 $78,173 4.79%
Programmer/Analyst $65,174 $69,757 $71,623 2.68%
Quality Assurance (QA)
Tester $64,486 $68,280 $68,952 0.98%
Web Developer/Programmer $61,261 $65,327 $68,571 4.97%
Network Engineer $65,122 $67,202 $68,391 1.77%
Systems Administrator $63,698 $64,917 $66,388 2.27%
Network Manager $58,434 $62,225 $64,638 3.88%
Technical Support $47,259 $49,347 $49,384 0.07%
Desktop Support
Specialist $42,204 $44,909 $46,458 3.45%
Help Desk $37,397 $39,430 $41,154 4.37%
PC Technician $34,563 $36,848 $36,974 0.34%
Table 6: Top Average Salaries for Popular
Technology Skills and Experience, 2007
2007
ETL - Extract, Transform and Load $96,559
ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning $95,589
SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol $95,387
Business Intelligence $94,317
Data Warehouse $93,200
ITIL - Information Technology Infrastructure Library $92,663
JBoss $92,518
Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) $91,542
Korn Shell $90,948
Siebel $90,833
Table 7: Average Salary by Satisfaction, 2007
Overall - Satisfaction
% of total Avg. Salary
Very satisfied 14% $93,065
Somewhat satisfied 39% $81,684
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied 15% $71,091
Somewhat dissatisfied 21% $63,612
Very dissatisfied 11% $51,560
About Dice
Dice is the leading career site for technology and engineering
professionals. With a 17-year track record of meeting the ever-changing needs
of technology professionals, companies and recruiters, our specialty focus and
exposure to highly skilled professional communities enable employers to reach
hard-to-find, experienced and qualified technology and engineering candidates.
Dice Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: DHX) is the parent company of Dice, the leading
career site for technology and engineering professionals (www.dice.com);
eFinancialCareers, the leading global career site network for jobs and career
management for investment banking, asset management and securities
professionals (www.efinancialcareers.com); ClearanceJobs, the premier secure
job board focused exclusively on candidates with active or current U.S.
Government security clearances (www.clearancejobs.com); JobsintheMoney, the
leading targeted career site for accounting and finance professionals in the
United States (www.jobsinthemoney.com); and Targeted Job Fairs, the premier
producer of career fairs and open houses for technology and engineering,
accounting and finance, and security-cleared candidates nationwide
(www.targetedjobfairs.com).
Media:
ICR Inc.
Stephanie Sampiere, 646-277-1222, stephanie.sampiere@icrinc.com
Matt Lindberg, 203-682-8214, matt.lindberg@icrinc.com
