IT and engineering salaries in the U.S. rose 3.9 percent in 2015, the second-highest annual increase since 2010, according to a survey from IEEE-USA.
The median income for IT and engineering professionals rose to US$135,000 in 2015, up from $130,000 in 2014, IEEE-USA said. Salaries rose nearly 4.3 percent between 2013 and 2014, after rising just 0.6 percent in 2013.
Engineers working in systems and control, including the subspecialties of robotics and automation, control systems, industrial electronics and cybernetics, saw the largest salary increases in 2015. Their salaries rose 8.7 percent to $130,000.
Workers in the fields of industrial applications, computers, and electromagnetics and radiation also saw salary increases of more than 5 percent in 2015, according to the survey of more than 9,600 people. While the jobs with salary hikes of more than 5 percent are “hot sectors,” IEEE-USA doesn’t research why those job categories are seeing higher salary increases, said Daryll Griffin, program manager for careers and innovation programs at the organization.
Workers in communications technology, circuits and devices, and signals and applications all saw salary increases of 1.7 percent or less. Those three fields, however, are already the highest paid among nine job catagories in the IEEE-USA survey, with communications technology workers earning a median income of $152,500 a year.
In 2009, the median income for IT workers and engineers in the U.S. was $113,500, according to the survey. While IT and engineering salaries have grown every year since then, IEEE-USA doesn’t try to predict salary increases going forward, Griffin said.
IEEE-USA, representing U.S. engineers and technology workers, has pushed Congress to revamp the high-skill H-1B foreign worker visa program despite the salary increases.
Computerworld’s IT salary survey also found a 3.9 percent increase between early 2015 and early 2016.
Last December, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that IT jobs in the U.S. would grow by 12 percent over the next decade.