IT salaries still rising

Salaries for IT workers continue to climb - and these increases are sometimes at the expense of non-technical staff, according to Meta Group.

The analyst's 2003 IT Staffing and Compensation Guide surveyed more than 650 large and medium-sized organisations, across 40 countries.

Wages for IT professionals have increased by five per cent on average this year, according to Meta.

Certain in-demand skills, such as application development and network infrastructure design, have seen a higher increase of between eight and 10 per cent.

As many as 61 per cent of IT managers said wages now represented between 25 and 50 per cent of their total IT budget.

"There is little question that IT budgets will continue to decline slightly or remain flat this year," said Maria Schafer, programme director of Meta Group's Human Capital Management Service.

"What's most interesting is the fact that, despite this, we expect IT salaries to actually rise, in some cases at the expense of non-IT employees."

The imbalance in wages is partially because of the overall need to retain skilled members of staff.

The majority of companies pay higher salaries to IT employees than non-technical workers, and the number doing so has increased from 67 per cent to 75 per cent year-on year.

The top method of employee retention remains the cash bonus. Just over half of respondents still offer IT employees an annual year-end bonus.

Two-fifths of companies use sign-on bonuses to attract higher-level IT employees.