Foote Partners: Outsourcing no longer a threat to US IT salaries
A study by research firm Foote Partners has shown that salaries for IT workers in the US are no longer dragged down by offshore outsourcing. While this may have been true a year to a year and a half ago, the trend has reversed now – in fact, the demand for specific skills and experience is once more on the rise.
The previous year had shown an annual dip of 7% to 10% in the salaries of US-based IT skill workers for fields such as application development and database knowledge. This has changed, assures Foote Partners president and head of research David Foote, "Pay for those skills are gaining back those loses and growing.”
Data for the study were gathered from HR, IT, business executives, and interviews. For the first half of 2005, growth for different fields stood at:
- networking skills – 5.1%
- database skills – 4.3%
- application development – 2.1%
Foote sees the demand for “talent beyond certification” and the “hybrid experience” responsible for the rise non-certified skills salaries. If anything, the scrutiny offshore-outsourcing has been under may actually have encouraged the rise in pay for key skills with the companies being more particular about workforce recruitment to include specific industry experience alongside technical know-how in the bid to avert outsourcing disasters.
This should come as no surprise. As Foote points out, "Risk aversion is very popular right now." A number of companies “got burned” with their outsourcing setups. This has taught companies to brush up recruitment and retaining of workers alongside outsourcing of other functions.
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