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NSW the priciest state?

While New South Wales is blowing its trumpet about making itself a place for the IT industry to settle, Victoria is still quietly pulling companies in.
Written by Suzanne Tindal, Contributor

While New South Wales is blowing its trumpet about making itself a place for the IT industry to settle, Victoria is still quietly pulling companies in.

This week saw Juniper announce that it was opening an expanded branch in Melbourne, for which it was set to make 50 hires. Today, Victorian Technology Minister Gordon Rich-Phillips said that IT consulting company DB Results was opening a new Melbourne head office and had committed to creating 100 new jobs by 2015.

Of course, NSW has just had the annual Tech23 start-up competition, which is backed by the state government. The government also announced that it would fund Fishburners, a start-up incubator. This is, of course, great news. But we aren't hearing from the government about the IT companies that are deciding to put down their roots in Sydney.

Is this because there are so many coming that it's not worth mentioning? Or because NSW doesn't really care about IT, even if it says it does? Or is it because NSW isn't attracting the companies Victoria is? And if so, why is that?

Could it be because NSW is overpriced?

Today the Australian Computer Society (ACS) released its Remuneration Salary Report for 2011. It looks at a whole range of statistics around remuneration.

Some of those statistics look at what workers are paid at different levels within an IT department.

The average wage for workers across all levels and all sectors in NSW is $110,582, according to the ACS survey. In Victoria, it's $101,268. That's almost a 10 grand difference. For a comparison, though, let's look at the lowest average, which was Tasmania at $86,317 (based on a sample size of 370, 249 and 25 respectively).

For the private sector, in the same states, it's $112,754 (NSW) versus $105,067 (Vic) and $79,784 (Tas). (Sample sizes were 312, 188 and 12.)

In the education sector it's $105,962, $82,607 and zip as there were no Tasmanian respondents. (NSW and Victorian sample sizes were 18 and 20.)

For the public sector the roles are switched, with NSW workers getting an average of $90,699, while Victorians get $92,674 and Tasmanians get $97,748. (Sample sizes 33, 34 and 11.)

If you're interested in wages at different levels of skill across all sectors here is a table of the mean wages for the states:

Level Mean wage NSW ($) Mean wage Vic ($) Sample size NSW Sample size Vic
1 51,686 49,388 27 14
2 75,796 67,394 60 48
3 102,241 92,346 140 97
4 131,720 126,394 105 68
5 164,388 183,500 38 16

Since NSW isn't one of the resource boomers like Queensland or Western Australia, it needs something to give it a boost. But has Victoria already nicked the IT throne?

What do you think? Does Victoria give IT companies better bang for their buck?

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