Where Are The Best-Paying IT Jobs?

If you work in IT, the amount of money you can earn is heavily influenced by two factors: the kind of work you do and the city where you work. Here’s what the latest statistics suggest are the hot areas and best-paying cities in Australia.

IT Recruiting company Peoplebank conducts a quarterly survey on payment trends for IT jobs in Australia. While the first quarter of the year normally sees a large amount of hiring, especially for contractors, that was less evident this year, in part because of delayed planning periods which meant that major projects kicked off later than usual.

In the chart below, we’ve compiled together some of the Peoplebank data to reflect the differing pay rates across six major Australian cities (Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane). For each position, we’ve listed the average annual salary for permanent staff, and the top day rate for casual staff. (Perth and Adelaide’s figures quoted an hourly rate, so we’ve assumed an eight-hour day; day rates weren’t quoted for Brisbane.)

The other inevitable question with salaries is: how much will they change? The table below (assembled by Peoplebank) shows average salaries for permanent IT roles over the past year. The first figure shows typical figures in March 2011 (green indicates an increase since the previous number); the second in black for August 2010; and the third in purple for April 2010. (Click for a larger version.)

Since these are average figures, you won’t necessarily hit those exact numbers. But if you are in the market for a new job, they’re worth bearing in mind to make sure you’re not getting drastically underpaid.

There’s a bunch more job positions for each city listed in Peoplebank’s full survey documents, which you can access as a series of PDF files here.

Evolve is a weekly column at Lifehacker looking at trends and technologies IT workers need to know about to stay employed and improve their careers.