Thursday, November 02, 2006

Boston Market -- November

Monster.com released its Employment Index for October and reported a three-month upward trend in job postings indicating "continued strong demand for IT professionals across the country". The Index including design professionals also participated in the three-month upward trend.

While this report confirms a strong job market for technology workers, not all technology workers are valued the same. For example, a new free salary service from CareerBuilder.com called CBSalary.com provides an insight into pay scales for workers with Internet and database skills. Check out the following average salaries in the greater Boston area:
From this simple analysis Web programming skills command a 50% pay premium over Web design skills. Database skills command a 100% pay premium over Web design skills.

What about the demand for these skills? Once again a similar trend emerges.

Listed below are several skills typically associated with Web Design [ along with the number of jobs listed for that skill at BostonWorks.com ]:
  • Photoshop [ 74 ]
  • CSS [ 72 ]
  • Flash [ 48 ]
  • Dreamweaver [ 34 ]
  • XHTML [ 13 ]
Listed below are several programming skills that are more typically associated with Web Development:
In addition, here are a few skills typically associated with Database Administration:
The demand trends and the compensation trends track each other as follows:
  • Web Designer [ lower demand → lower pay ]
  • Web Developer [ moderate demand → moderate pay ]
  • Database Administrator [ higher demand → higher pay ]
If you are looking to upgrade your skills consider one of the following FREE online courses enrolling later this month at the HP Learning Center:
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