Computerworld - Despite the fact that technology is playing an increasingly important role in the U.S. economy, IT wages remain persistently flat.
"IT salaries have not really kept pace with inflation," said Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco Associates, which follows IT compensation trends.
The still-sluggish U.S. economy gets most of the blame, but outsourcing, improved productivity and automation are also factors, say analysts.
According to a new report compiled by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a policy research firm, the average hourly wage adjusted for inflation in computer and math occupations that require at least a bachelor's degree was $37.27 in 2000; the average hourly wages for those same jobs had increased by less than $2 an hour in 2011, to $39.24.
The results translate to an average wage increase of less than 0.5% a year, or just $1.97 an hour, over 10 years, according to the EPI report.
The report is based on data from the Current Population Survey, a monthly survey of households conducted by the Census Bureau.
A running index of hourly technology wages compiled by Yoh Services, a staffing firm for skilled IT pros, lists an average hourly wage of $31.45 for week 12 of 2012; Yoh listed the hourly average as $31.78 for the same week in 2010.
Over the past 10 years, Yoh's index has shown hourly wages consistently in the $30 to $32 range, for the most part.
John Longwell, vice president of research at Computer Economics, said that while "it would be fair to say that the globalization of markets for goods and services is helping restrain wages across many sectors, including the IT sector," observers shouldn't overstate the impact of IT offshoring.
"Offshoring is certainly having an impact on programmers," but other factors like low inflation, sluggish economic growth and improved productivity are more "important factors in restraining U.S. wages in general, including IT wages," Longwell said.
Joel Capperella, vice president of marketing at Yoh, said wages generally go up when companies expand use of temporary IT workers, as is occurring today, "because historically, temporary demand increases have preceded an increase in permanent employee demand." However, he noted that this recovery period has been so sluggish that an increase in permanent IT jobs doesn't seem imminent.
Capperella did note that wages are rising faster for people whose skills are in demand.
For instance, the supply of IT pros with expertise in agile development is very low, while demand for such skills is strong, Capperella noted. Those skills, therefore, "command a very high hourly and salary rate," he added.
The EPI report was written as a counterpoint to Microsoft's proposal to let companies pay the federal government for H-1B visas so they can hire foreign workers who hold degrees in the so-called STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) for jobs that are unfilled due to an IT skills shortage.
Contrary to Microsoft's claim, "there are too many educated, experienced STEM workers who are trying to find a job; there is not a shortage of them," said the report's author, Daniel Costa, an EPI attorney and immigration policy analyst.
Microsoft's proposal is "unsurprising," Costa said, since adding STEM workers in a tough economy would boost IT unemployment rates, which in turn would keep wages low.
This version of this story was originally published in Computerworld's print edition. It was adapted from an article that appeared earlier on Computerworld.com.
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