Introduction
Welcome to the Global Knowledge 2019 IT Skills and Salary Report. It is the largest worldwide study of professionals in the technology community and has been conducted annually for over a decade. Throughout the report, you’ll find the data broken up by region: North America; Latin America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA); and the Asia-Pacific region. IT professionals, human resources and industry leaders use this report as a guide for salaries, in-demand certifications, tech priority areas, skills gaps, professional development, job satisfaction, and future outlooks in IT. Traditionally, we have combined all areas of study into one report, but this year we’re breaking it up into smaller reports so we can dig deeper into each topic.
The reports will be:
• Salary and certifications
• IT decision-maker insights
• Professional development and job satisfaction
• Looking forward
Compensation
An employee’s compensation is determined by a combination of factors, including education, responsibility level, job role,
certification, tenure, industry, company size and geography—even global and regional economies. In this year’s IT Skills and
Salary Survey, we asked respondents about these factors and discovered variations around the globe, starting with base salaries.
We converted salaries into U.S. dollars to enable relevant comparisons.
BASE SALARY
The average annual salary for global IT professionals is $89,732—the highest it’s ever been in this report.
North American IT professionals earn $109,985, which is 23% more than the worldwide average. In the U.S., that number
increases to 27%. EMEA has the second highest average salary ($70,445), followed by the Asia-Pacific region ($65,738) and Latin
America ($41,465).IT professionals in the U.S. earn higher salaries than their counterparts in any other region. A clear distinction across all geographies is the ratio of IT decision-makers’ salaries compared to the salaries of the employees they manage. In North America, IT managers earn an average of 40% more than their staff. This ratio is comparable to Latin America (44%) and Asia-Pacific (38%).
In the U.S., decision-makers make 37% more than the employees they manage.
RAISES AND BONUSES
Our respondents, on average, made nearly $5,000 more this year than last. The highest salary increase was amongst Latin American IT professionals, who experienced an average raise of 6.5%. North America (5.8%), EMEA (5.6%) and Asia-Pacific (5.2%) saw slightly smaller
increases.
Reasons for a raise
Forty-two percent of the respondents who received a raise attribute it primarily to job performance. Standard company increase is the second most frequently mentioned reason. Fifteen percent were promoted within their company in the past year.
The reason for a raise impacts the amount of the raise. Nine percent of IT professionals attribute their raise to adding new skills—those same individuals earned nearly $12,000 more than last year, a strong indication that training pays off.
Professionals who left their current company and sought a promotion elsewhere saw their salaries jump over 26%, while those who were promoted internally increased their salaries by 14%. A lateral move to another company resulted in a 20% salary increase.
