IT pay increases connected to outsourcing backlash, says study

A research news item on Tekrati from Foote Partners jumps to the conclusion that recent survey results that show strong pay growth for applications development, database, enterprise software, networking, and systems administration skills, means that offshore outsourcing is no longer pushing down wages for U.S. IT professionals as it once had as recently as one year ago.  David Foote, the firm's president had this to say; "It's true that 18 months ago pay many tech skills subject were in 7% to 10% annual declines, according to our surveys of 50,000 IT professionals…And these were key skills resident in jobs that were being offshored." 

With the recent offshoring backlash, the connection Foote makes is reasonable, even if the compensation study didn't specifically look for effects of outsourcing trends in the first place. But it is interesting to take a step back and see how disruptive trends play out by swinging back and forth until eventually some sort of equilibrium is reached. In the case of offshoring, that point will come after several more cycles of job redistribution to places where cost-performance metrics are ideal and many parts of the world are left on a level playing field.