The latest SSP/Computer Weekly quarterly survey of job
advertisements makes grim reading unless you are system developer.
Nicholas Enticknap reports on the winners and losers in the IT
professional jobs market.
Now is not a good time to be looking for a new job. The number of
job ads for IT professionals was down by more than a half in
January to March than in the same period last year and between
October and December 2001. And the salaries on offer over the first
three months of 2002 averaged just 1.2% higher than a year ago,
barely above the headline inflation rate for February. So new jobs
are hard to find and not worth the effort of moving if pay is your
motive. Keeping your head down to avoid redundancy is the order of
the day.
There are special factors underlying these figures, which are drawn
from the SSP/Computer Weekly Quarterly Survey of Appointments Data
and Trends. Recruitment in the IT industry fell by very much more
than that in user companies over the first three months of this
year. IT companies tend to pay more than users, so when they have
fewer vacancies average pay levels drop. This IT industry cutback
has happened against the background of a four-year long global
downturn.
Taking a longer view, the salary picture at least does not look so
gloomy. Compared to five years ago (the first quarter of 1997),
salaries offered are typically up 25%, more than double the
headline inflation rate of 12% over the same period. Over a 10-year
period, the pattern is much the same: salaries are on average up
57%, compared to inflation of 28%.
Returning to 2002, system developer is the most popular single job
title out of the 65 analysed by SSP with nearly 25,000 positions
offered on the Web in the first quarter. The job description
typically requires two to three years' relevant experience. There
were a further 8,000 jobs for senior staff with at least three
years' experience, and 1,200 more for positions also requiring team
leadership skills. The average salary offered to a systems
developer without seniority in the first quarter was £34,772:
seniority typically adds 20% to that, and team leadership
responsibilities 40%. That £34,772 is an average across all types
of employer in all parts of the UK using every type of platform. It
conceals wide variations. The biggest single factor affecting
salary is the job's location. System developer salaries offered
ranged from just over £28,000 in north-east England to nearly
£44,000 in central London.
The type of employer makes a difference. The finance sector pays
best: these companies offered salaries of just under £40,000 in the
first quarter. This generosity is partly because many of these
organisations are based in central London, which pays 26% above the
national average. At the other end of the scale, engineering firms
offered system developers an average of just under £31,000, 11%
below the national average. In this sector there is a much smaller
regional variation, with top whack of just under £35,000 in central
London and a low offer of less than £29,000 in the north-east.
Platform type and skills in demand can also make a difference. Java
developers were offered an average of £36,000 over the quarter,
while jobs requiring HTML skills attracted salaries of only
£31,000.
That average system developer salary of £34,772 is just £16 a year
up on the average offered in 2001. But compared to the first
quarter of 1997, it is up 22%, from £28,408. The term systems
developer was unknown a decade ago, but analyst/programmers were
common. They were offered £29,708 in the first quarter of this
year. That is 2% up on 2001, 23% up on five years ago, and 65% up
on the £18,000 of 1992.
Top of the tree for salaries are IT directors, who were typically
offered just over £80,000 in the first quarter. There is a very
wide range here, with the top positions attracting offers of
£120,000, while for others the salary was "just" £60,000.
That is about what management/system consultants can expect to get,
with the average here being just under £64,000. These positions are
mainly advertised by software houses, and the salaries on offer
have fallen 10% since last year, when the average was over £70,000.
Salaries for consultants rose dramatically in the late 1990s at the
time of the Y2K boom, and are now sinking back to a more realistic
level. The average today is just 4% up on five years ago, when the
boom was well under way, but is a fairly typical 65% up on the
£39,000 of 1992.
Of other major job titles, a systems analyst can today expect to
get a little over £30,000, a programmer £25,000 to £26,000, a PC
support analyst about £22,500, a software engineer some £31,000, a
database administrator about £37,000, and an operator along the
lines of £22,000. There is little change in any of these figures
from a year ago. The range is from -1% (support analyst, database
administrator and operator) to +3% (systems analyst).
Compared to five years ago, PC support analysts have seen the least
movement, with a below inflation rise of 5%. The other major job
positions have seen salaries on offer increase by amounts ranging
from 19% (systems analyst) to 31% (operator). Over a 10-year period
all job positions have seen rises above the inflation rate, ranging
from 30% (support analyst) to 66% (operator). So salaries have
typically risen by double the inflation rate over the 10 years, and
the current stagnation is untypical. It reflects the lack of
activity in the IT job market, which has been depressed since the
Y2K boom came to an end in the middle of 1998.
Among professionals looking for jobs today, software engineers are
best placed. Jobs on offer in the last quarter fell by a fifth,
much less than the 52% of the market as a whole. This relative
increase in demand for software engineers has been a steady trend
for over a year, and as a result they now account for one in 10 of
all jobs advertised, compared to 6% at this time last year. Demand
for software engineers with communications expertise is actually up
75% over the past year. This is in contrast to networking
specialists, who have suffered one of the biggest falls in
recruitment, 70% over the year. They now account for only 3% of all
jobs, down from 5% a year ago and 10% over 2000 as a whole.
This reflects the loss of enthusiasm for Internet-based
developments. Specialist communications companies retrenched
accordingly, cutting advertising by nearly two-thirds. Web
specialists suffered the biggest decline of any job category, with
the jobs on offer down 84% to less than 1,000, compared to more
than 5,000 a year ago.
Regionally, the best place to be for choice was in the north. Jobs
fell by just 22% in the north-west, by 31% in the north-east and by
28% in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In London, in contrast, the
number of vacancies was less than half what it was a year ago. This
time jobs in the capital accounted for less than 30% of the total,
compared to 39% at this time last year.
There was an increase in jobs on the Web in four industry sectors.
Utilities posted more than treble the number of jobs of a year ago,
while engineering companies were looking for more than twice as
many IT professionals and the public sector for nearly twice as
many. All these sectors have been slow to move to Web-based
advertising. The public sector is lagging the most: it accounts for
only 1% of Web-based jobs, but for nearly a quarter of jobs
advertised in the press - more than the entire IT industry
combined.
Paper-based advertising now accounts for only 2% of all jobs.
Advertisements in the magazines were down by 80% on a year ago, but
by only 13% on the fourth quarter. That is perhaps a sign that the
migration to Web-based advertising is now complete. Ads on the Web
were down by a half both on the first quarter and on the fourth
quarter of 2001.
There has been little change in the skills most in demand. C++, SQL
and Unix remain the top three, though the last two have swapped
places. Apart from SQL, which is in 16th place in the engineering
sector, all three skills feature in the top 10 for every industry
sector. C++ is most in demand in software houses, the media, the
utilities and the public sector. It is also second only to C in
electronics and communications firms.
Unix is number one in the finance sector. Some advertisers specify
expertise in a particular brand of Unix. Sun's Solaris was the most
popular, featuring in 17th place overall for the quarter. IBM AIX
was 47th and HP's HP-UX 84th. Linux was 31st. Though in second
place overall, SQL is does not top of any individual sector league
table, but is the most popular skill among users in total. Oracle,
fifth overall, was one of only two other skills to top any industry
sector league table: it was number one among retail and
distribution companies.
The other was the surprise package of the quarter, SAP. Demand ran
at almost five times the level of a year ago - it was then 76th,
and was still only 61st in the fourth quarter, but has rocketed up
to 13th overall this time. It was the most popular skill of all in
the manufacturing sector, and was also in the top 10 in the finance
and utilities sectors.
SAP was one of only three skills in the top 20 to show more demand
than a year ago. Interest in embedded applications continues to
rise steadily entering the top 10 this time. Growth over the year
was 35%.
The third upward mover was the Unified Modelling Language (UML)
development environment, whose advance this time is only slightly
less spectacular than that of SAP. In 63rd place a year ago and
45th place last time, it was up to its highest ever position of
20th in the first quarter after featuring in more than double the
number of ads on a year ago. Enthusiasm for UML is greatest in
engineering companies.
The league table generally maintains the trend shown throughout
2001, with Internet-related skills slowly losing ground to
conventional client/server skills as companies re-evaluate their
e-business strategies. Among Web-based skills that are falling from
favour are Java, which has fallen four places to eighth, HTML down
nine places to 16th, Javascript down 10 places to 25th, and Perl
down 14 places to 34th. On the comms front, expertise in Cisco
products is down 17 places to 30th. Bucking this trend slightly are
XML (up two places to 14th), and Active Server Page (up four to
15th).
There is also a loss of enthusiasm for component-based development,
particularly in the IT industry. The figure for the object
architecture Corba symbolises this decline with a fall of 34 places
in the table to 69th. A year ago it was 13th in the software houses
table and 11th in the comms companies table: this time it has not
featured in the top 35 of any industry sector table. Distributed
Component Object Model and Enterprise Java Beans are also well
down, 28 places to 52nd and 23 places to 56th respectively.
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