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You Call This A Dead-End Career?

This week, InformationWeek comes out with its annual National IT Salary Survey, and an interactive Salary Adviser based on the data. Through this week, we'll ask questions about the IT career path and highlight data that relates to it. Today: Is IT a career path you'd recommend to a teenager? The average computer-science or engineering grad will make $13,000 more than the average marketing major this year. Yet two-thirds of working IT pros in the InformationWeek survey don't consider it as promising a career path as it used to be. Why so glum?

We all know the legitimate causes for concerns. This is a market being hit with an unprecedented wave of globalization, and companies, wherever they can, are moving IT jobs to lower-cost locations.

But a lot of recent data paints a pretty decent picture of the U.S. IT workplace. IT unemployment is below 4%, and average salaries in the InformationWeek Salary Survey have grown almost 6% a year the past five years--to $71,000 on average for staff and $95,000 for managers. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the average college grad in computer science or engineering will make $51,394, compared with $43,809 for accounting and $37,832 for marketing grads.

There is cause for caution in all numbers. The NACE found different directions for graduates of computer engineering versus computer science: Engineering graduates' pay dipped 2% to $51,496, while computer science rose 2.6% to $51,292. Yet one of the most-lucrative engineering-related jobs is software design and development positions, which averaged $55,108.

Looking at these numbers, I see a career that still holds great promise for someone with a passion for technology and engineering. Is that wrong? Would you steer a teenager away from computer science?

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