InformationWeek Salary Survey: What IT Pros Earn

Is your salary as high as you think it should be? Are you making what your peers are making? Should you be looking for a new job in order to get that salary boost this year? If these are the questions you are looking to answer, we’ve got some insights for you.

InformationWeek checked in with IT professionals across the US to find out whether salaries were going up or down, how many were thinking about finding a new job, and what qualities mattered most to them about their work. The full results are in the InformationWeek 2022 US IT Salary Report (PDF available for free download with site registration to InformationWeek.)

Meanwhile, here are some of the top-line results from our survey this year. The median total compensation for all IT workers went up by 4% to $125,000 in 2021 from where it was in 2020. While that 4% increase may seem respectable, it’s not even half of the 9% increase IT workers earned between 2019 and 2020, before the pandemic hit a boom-time economy.

That plus inflation may cause many IT workers to feel as if they are being left behind, especially given the current state of the job market where there are many more job openings than qualified candidates to fill them.

Do I Stay or Do I Go?

But that’s the tricky part. If you want a big raise you probably need to change jobs, according to recruitment experts. Yet a lot of IT pros are satisfied with their current gigs and are not looking to make a change.

When InformationWeek asked IT pros if they were looking for a different job, 63% said no. Just 11% said they were actively looking and 26% said they were somewhat looking -- numbers that almost exactly matched what IT pros said the year before in 2020 when the early pandemic shutdowns caused so much employment uncertainty.

That lack of interest in looking for new work by the majority of those polled may be what’s holding back a bigger rise in median compensation for now.

Among those who confirmed that they were looking for a new job, the top motivation was wanting higher compensation at 76%. Other top motivators weren’t even close to that. Another 41% said they were seeking more interesting work, 39% said they were seeking more personal fulfillment, 32% said they didn’t like the present company’s management or culture, and 30% said they were looking for the ability to work remotely. (Multiple responses were allowed to this question.)

What IT Pros Value the Most

But if 63% of IT pros are not looking for a new job, overall, what do IT pros value the most about their jobs? The top response to this question was work/life balance, cited by 46%. It was the first year that the survey included this response as an option, so there’s no number to compare it to from the previous year. Other top qualities that mattered most to IT pros were vacation time/paid time off (42% compared to 32% the previous year), my opinion and knowledge are valued (40% compared to 42% the previous year), and telecommuting/working at home (40% compared to 31% the previous year). Only after all those quality-of-life type answers did IT pros name base pay as important (39% compared to 38% the previous year).

These work/life balance, vacation time, and remote work answers are coming at a time when many organizations are encouraging workers to come back to the office, at least on a hybrid basis. But other employers are recognizing the value of providing the option to stay remote to workers who may be tempted to change jobs to maintain the flexibility they came to appreciate during the height of the pandemic.

“We can see from the industry trends and the job title trends that technology work is really leading the way on remote work,” Ladders CEO Marc Cenedella recently told InformationWeek.

Looking for more about the trends around IT jobs, salaries, skills, and more? Be sure to download the full report for free.

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