Credit crunch hits IT salaries up North

 

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By Miya Knights

Posted on 7 Jan 2009 at 11:34

The credit crunch is starting to bite into UK IT professional salaries, according to new data released this week.

IT professionals in the North of England have been hardest hit as their pay has decreased by 1.7% in the past year, according to data obtained by e-Skills UK.

IT staffing company, ReThink Recruitment notes that, while actual wage decreases were relatively rare, the drop had also widened the IT pay gap between the North of England and London for the first time in two years.

The data showed that salaries for IT professionals in the North shrunk to an average of £29,380 per year. This contrasts with a 1.2% increase in wages in London to an average of £45,240, which means IT workers in the North now earn only 65% of London wages, compared to 67% of in 2007.

Michael Bennett, ReThink Recruitment's director, says that London's financial sector has taken the brunt of the fallout from the credit crunch. "But the capital's IT staff, many of whom work for financial institutions, are proving more resilient to the downturn than their counterparts in the North," he adds.

The recruiter reasons that Northern IT-based jobs were more vulnerable than those based in London. This is because the concentration of data processing and IT support functions in the North tended to be lower skilled than London IT jobs and, therefore, are more easily outsourced to offshore IT centres in countries such as India.

"IT staff that are able to boost the bottom line tend to be more highly skilled and therefore less likely to be threatened by offshore competition," Bennett adds.

The e-Skills stats also shows that the overall wage growth for IT professionals in the UK stood at 3.4%, lagging behind the UK's overall 6% wage growth rate.