Report: IT salaries and benefits drop, IT job market over-saturated

Both salaries for IT professionals and overall IT job openings are down in the past 18 months, according to new data released by Janco on Monday as part of its 2009 Mid Year IT Salary Survey. The survey also contained some other residual bad news for IT pros, although there were a couple a few bright spots.

Victor Janulaitis, Janco CEO, said, "The current economic climate with its cost cutting mind sets, business closures, and extensive outsourcing has put such great pressure on the IT job market that overall pay has been impacted. Added to that many 'baby-boomers' who had planned on retiring in the next few years are not leaving the job market and you have more potential employees than positions available."

Some of the highlights from the report include:

• In addition to layoffs, many companies are doing hiring freezes
• A lot of mid-sized companies have completely stopped hiring
• Bonuses are being reduced for many IT workers
• Flexible work schedules are becoming less common
• Some IT pros are paying a greater share of their health care costs
• There is an over-abundance of veteran IT pros in the market, with many retirements being put off and many retirees returning to the job market
• The meltdown of the financial industry is drastically hurting the New York IT market. The report states, "There are over 200 IT professionals in the Metro New York are who earned well into six figures that are looking for work due to mergers, bankruptcies, and layoffs"

And here are some interesting graphs as well. The first one shows which IT jobs are in demand and which ones have been most in danger of being cut. The second shows the change in average IT salaries over the past 18 months. The third shows the demand for IT leadership jobs.

If you'd like to view the full report, you'll have to purchase the PDF from Janco.

Analysis

The most interesting part of the report has to do with middle managers. They are often heavily targeted in layoffs. In Janco's report it looks like a lot of middle managers have been shed in layoffs in the past 18 months, but the ones who remained in large organizations have actually received a pay increase.

The same goes for technical staff members who have survived in large organizations. Their average salaries increased in the past 18 months as well. In both cases, it may be that the best performers are the ones who remain and they are being asked to take one larger workloads due to layoffs, so the extra money could be a way to compensate them and keep them happy. In some cases, these workers may also be more valuable now if they are being asked to manage outsourced workers.

Another interesting dichotomy is the role of database managers. For mid-sized companies in Janco's report, database managers and database specialists were both in the strong demand column. However, for large companies, DBMs were in the expendable column. Maybe this means that most large enterprises are simply farther along in the establishment of a business-class database infrastructure, while many mid-sized companies are still in the build-out stage.

See also: U.S. sheds another 35K IT jobs in May, but market may be stabilizing