IT Salary Report: How Do You Stack Up?

“Over the last 12 months, we’ve seen a 20 percent increase in the number of jobs posted,” says Dice CEO Scot Melland. “And that’s coming off of huge increases in ’04 and ’05. So this is still a growing tech job market.”

The increase in number of positions means it’s more difficult for companies and recruiters to find qualified people to fill these jobs. Consequently, the magic of supply and demand has pushed up pay levels.

The average IT salary rose a respectable 5.2 percent in 2006, according to Dice.

It’s this 5.2 percent increase that Melland, surveying all the job data, finds the most noteworthy. While this number is a national average – and therefore varies widely based on IT specialty and region – still, “You put that up against the averages for other industries, and other skill areas, and that’s great.”

Looking at 2007, Melland notes that it would be very hard for the tech industry to replicate the job growth of the last few years, as it emerged in 2003 from the slump. But the job trendline appears to be continuing upward.

Peering into the crystal ball for 2007 job growth, “I would foresee a continuation of what we saw in ’06, which was a nice steady growth across all the traditional technology skill sets,” he tells Datamation. “There’s going to be a lot of competition for qualified tech professionals.”

Average Salary by Title, 2005-2006

The following salary averages are based on a survey of 19,000 tech professionals:

IT Executive: 2005: $104,504 // 2006: $108,578

Project Manager: 2005: $93,009 // 2006: $96,475

Database Administrator: 2005: $81,301 // 2006: $85,441

Software Engineer: 2005: $78,807 // 2006: $83,524

MIS Manager: 2005: $82,824 // 2006: $82,510

Business Analyst: 2005: $77,158 // 2006: $82,288

Developer: Database: 2005: $73,768 // 2006: $79,911

Security Analyst: 2005: $74,874 // 2006: $79,412

Developer: Systems: 2005: $72,732 // 2006: $78,476

Developer: Applications: 2005: $73,636 // 2006: $78,037

Developer: Client/Server: 2005: $75,941 // 2006: $74,602

(Salary data courtesy of Dice.)

View IT salary figures for the following categories:

Salary by IT specialty: CRM, Java, ERP, etc.

Salary by region, from Silicon Valley to New York

Salary by industry, from banking to telecom to e-commerce

Salary by years of experience

Salary by level of satisfaction