Wages for US high-technology professionals fell 0.8%
overall in the first three months of this year, compared with the
first quarter of 2004.
According to the latest Yoh index of technology wages, the
quarterly index used by top companies to determine salary scales,
although salaries rose 3.1% in January, those gains were lost in
February and March.
"Wages are not growing as rapidly as might be expected, given
the significant constraints on high-technology labour pools," said
Jim Lanzalotto, Yoh vice-president for strategy and marketing.
"Companies are continuing to hold the line on wages. However, I
think we will see wages start to climb at a somewhat faster pace as
it becomes harder to find high-impact talent, and companies have to
compete more aggressively to fill these positions."
A number of top US IT suppliers - including IBM, HP, Sun
Microsystems and a number of telcos - are in the middle of
swingeing job cutting programmes, which could be affecting overall
industry wages.
Yoh is one of the world’s largest recruitment services companies
and helps fill jobs in UK companies too.
The Yoh index is based on data complied from the company's 40 US
field offices and uses actual employment activity of more than
5,000 technology professionals.
The top 10 high-technology job titles in the US, according to
the first quarter Yoh Index, were:
- Clinical trial manager
- Microsoft ASP.net developer
- Microsoft VB.net developer
- SQL developer
- Verilog designer
- Software engineer
- Field applications engineer
- Director, regulatory affairs
- Design verification engineer
- RFID engineer