U.S. Tech Salaries Grow, But Not For Everyone
The median income for tech professionals hit US $154,443 in 2020, up from $148,500 in 2019. Adjusted to constant 2020 dollars, that's about a 2.8 percent increase. These numbers exclude overtime, profit sharing, and side hustles. That's particularly good news for engineers this year, considering that inflation-adjusted salaries were basically flat in 2019 compared with 2018.
This data-and some 60 more pages of detailed salary and job satisfaction statistics-comes from IEEE-USA's 2021 Salary & Benefits survey. It focuses on professionals working in their area of technical competence (5466 of the respondents), and excludes overtime pay, profit sharing, and other supplemental earnings; when those are considered, the median income was $160,000.
The gains weren't spread equally, of course. In this latest survey, engineers working with consumer electronics and broadcast technology came out on top, with median salaries of $209,373 and $209,000 respectively. Though there's no way of telling from the data collected, it wouldn't be a huge leap to suggest that our dependence on home entertainment during the pandemic gave these categories a boost. Tech professionals working in energy and power engineering continue to hover near the bottom of the ranks, with a median salary of $140,000, and robotics and automation is down there as well. Both seem surprising, given the growing need for new energy technologies as well as increasing automation across the board. Bringing up a distant rear is education, with a median income of $120,000. (Consulting income is not included in that number; for some educators, that's a big missing piece.)
Job satisfaction data in the 2020 survey are the first to reflect the pandemic effect. This analysis looks at several factors, ranking them on a scale of -2 to +2. Comparing numbers to 2019, overall satisfaction rose during the pandemic. However, survey respondents found that their satisfaction with technical challenge, employer support for technical viability, and work/life balance declined since the 2019 survey.
Companies forsaking California for Texas have made headlines over the past few years. And Texas salaries indeed saw gains, with 2020 salaries $7307 above the national norm, compared with $1500 in 2019. But these did not come at the expense of the Pacific region: West Coast tech professionals still draw top dollar.
Salary disparities related to gender and race continued to grow, according to the most recent IEEE-USA survey, with the median gap between men and women's salary jumping $5500 to $28,000 from 2019, after a similar increase in 2019 from 2018. This is certainly a trend in the wrong direction.
And the gap between Caucasians and African Americans also continued to grow, up $2250 to $24,250 in 2019, after a $1500 increase in 2019 from 2018.