IT is consistently cited as one of the most-promising U.S. careers, even with the rise of offshore outsourcing. As with most professions, however, compensation is rising only modestly. The IT field still pays well, with staffers earning $ 90,000 in median total compensation and managers earning $ 120,000, the 2013 InformationWeek U.S. IT Salary Survey finds. But compensation for staffers is flat compared with last year and up only 3% for managers.
Compensation varies substantially by skill and industry. Staffers focused on enterprise application integration earn a median $ 110,000, those in general IT earn $ 73,000 and those on the help desk earn $ 55,000. A few staff specialties such as cloud computing ($ 130,000), Web security ($ 118,000) and mobile ($ 111,000) pay even higher, though our survey sample sizes are small for those areas. Staffers with the IT architect title make a median $ 130,000.
IT managers earn six-figure median compensation in 22 of 23 job categories — help desk managers are the exception, earning $ 83,000. Among IT staffers, 13 of the 23 functions pay more than $ 90,000, eight of them more than $ 100,000.
This marks the 16th year of our Salary Survey, so we have data to track long-term trends. Compared with 10 years ago, few IT employers have dropped health insurance and 401(k) match benefits — the percentage of respondents receiving those benefits declined only a few points, to 81% and 70%, respectively. The one plunge is in “further education/training,” down from 45% for staffers and 46% for managers in 2004 to 29% for staffers and 28% for managers today. And people are our most important asset?