While pay rates for some jobs are being affected by the economic slowdown, IT salaries are showing no sign of dropping off, according to an analysis of jobs posted on Trade Me in the first half of this year.
According to the survey, which covers 73,000 jobs across all occupations, the five top-paid professions are: IT architects, with an average salary of $114,781; doctors, at $106,823; IT project managers, at $103,445; IT consultants, at $101, 248; and construction project managers, at $95,378.
Of the three IT-related professions in the top five, two — IT architects and project managers — showed a salary increase over last year, with IT architects’ pay increasing from $113, 262 and project managers scoring nearly a $5,000 pay rise, up from $98,753 last year.
Trade Me Jobs manager Jimmy McGee says that, looking beyond the top five professions, the average IT salary overall was $83,419, up from $81,885 last year.
“We break IT down into all the different professions and disciplines”, he says.
The greatest increase year-on-year was in networking and systems, where the average salary rose from $69,460 to $75,419.
Another trend McGee says is apparent is the high number of programming and development jobs being posted.
Developers and programmers are “hard to come by”, he says.
The lack of such skill is being exacerbated by the push to online, he says.
“As businesses migrate online, and online takes off, programmers and developers are needed.”
Overall, “IT talent is still really tight — it seems feasible that the easing in the labour market may by-pass IT entirely.
“There’s still a shortage of good IT candidates.”
It is in lower-skilled, lower-paid occupations that the deteriorating economic climate is being seen, McGee says.
“We are seeing two distinct trends at present. Pay rates for unskilled and semi-skilled are flat, while pay rates for mid-level earners and the highly skilled are increasing at rates above the national average.”
In the five lowest-paid jobs — kitchen staff, waiting staff, caregivers, retail assistants and cleaners — wages fell slightly compared to last year.