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Average Salaries For Technology Professionals Increased
5.2 Percent In 2006 According to the Dice Salary Survey The continued tightening of the technology job market is evident in the 2006 edition of Dice’s Annual Tech Salary Survey. The survey of nearly 20,000 technology professionals found that average Tech salaries in the U.S. increased 5.2 percent to $73,308 in 2006 from $69,700 in 2005. Highlights of the survey illustrate key industry trends, including:
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The overall increase in technology salaries can be traced back to the continued
improvement in the technology job market. Strong demand for technology professionals
to fulfill available jobs is driving many companies to use higher salaries to attract and
retain technology professionals. The survey found that starting salaries outpaced the
overall national average, with an increase of 13.1 percent to $42,414 in 2006. Those
with one to two years of technology experience also saw strong gains, with a 13.8
percent increase to $46,935.
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| “By offering competitive salary and benefit plans, companies are more likely to attract and retain new employees, which will help fill the growing gap in available talent,” said Scot Melland, president and CEO of Dice Holdings, Inc. “The survey also found that higher salaries often correlate with higher job satisfaction, which underscores the importance of regularly reviewing compensation.” |
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Top Paying Skills and Experience Technology professionals earning the highest salaries in 2006 possessed hard-to-find, specialized experience in areas such as Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP ($96,161), Sarbanes-Oxley ($91,998) and Customer Relationship Management or CRM ($90,499). Additionally, some of the most consistently in-demand skills on Dice, like Oracle and Java/J2EE, also commanded top salaries ($84,692 and $82,851 respectively) as companies strived to fill those positions. For 2006, Sybase was the top paying database skill ($85,049), while SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) led all programming skills with $89,243. |
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Gender Gap The gender gap narrowed slightly in 2006, as women in technology earned an average of $67,542, or 9.7 percent less than their male counterparts. Comparatively, women earned 10.9 percent less than men in 2005. The gender gap was evident across all industries included in the survey, with medical/pharmaceutical and telecommunications showing the largest differences in pay (11.5 percent less and 10 percent less respectively). Women holding database administrator positions showed the greatest salary gap with more than a 15 percent difference from male database administrators. However, women did show significant gains in salary for specific job titles, and as a result, they actually earned more than their male counterparts in certain jobs. |
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In 2006, female help desk professionals earned $40,937 (4.8 percent more than men); technical
writers earned $73,816 (2.5 percent more than men); and IT executives (CEO, CIO,
CTO, vice presidents and directors) earned $109,912 (1.4 percent more than men). Younger female employees also posted smaller salary gaps than older female employees, as women age 18 to 24 earned nearly the same salary as men ($41,700 versus $41,722 respectively). Women age 25 to 29 earned 7.6 percent less than men ($55,480 versus $60,031 respectively), compared to gaps of at least 10% in all age groups over 30. |
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Geography Salaries also increased across the majority of surveyed metro areas. In 2006, Silicon Valley once again ranked as the highest paying metro area for tech professionals with an average salary of $90,310, up 5.7 percent from 2005. Other top paying cities include: Boston ($80,308), New York ($80,006) and Baltimore/Washington D.C. ($79,911). The survey also showed strong gains for West Coast metro areas, such as San Diego (up 10.1 percent to $79,416), Seattle (up 9.1 percent to $79,787) and Los Angeles (up 7.7 percent to $79,583). |
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Industry Banking, financial and insurance was once again the highest paying industry for tech professionals with an average salary of $82,504 in 2006, while telecommunications and computer software followed behind with average salaries of $78,003 and $77,582 respectively. However, it was the retail and e-commerce industry that posted the strongest salary gains last year with a 14.2 percent increase to $63,830. |
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Additional Relevant Charts The following tables present a snapshot of Average Salaries by Title, Employment Type and Company Size. |
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Survey Methodology The Dice Salary Survey was administered online among 19,182 registered Dice.com job seekers and visitors between August 2 and November 30, 2006. Respondents were invited to participate in the survey through a notification on the Dice homepage, and registered job seekers were sent an e-mail 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 e-mail 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 sytem administrators to CIOs and other technology professionals. |
