How much would you get if you were a graduate starting in IT now?

Hardest Hit

It seems, as our last article says, that IT graduates are being hardest hit by the recession.

However, their pay rates are amongst the best.

Do you remember how much you were earning when you first started out in IT?

I remember the point when I was earning more in a week as a contractor than I earned in a year when I first started in IT.

In fact it was late about quarter to three on the Thursday afternoon in the week when I had earned more that week than for the whole year when I first started out.

Median Salary

The median salary for a person with an IT degree on his or her first job is now £28,000 a year.

I wonder if the graduates staring now will ever get to the point in their careers when they will be earning more than that in a week.

I doubt it somehow.

It hasn't moved that much in the past 10 years or so.

Pay Rates

When I was recruiting graduates in the 1997 we were paying them in the 16K to 20K range.

I think that, from memory, the average rate for graduates was either 18K or 19K in those days.

So it looks as if it has just gone up by about 50% in 12 years.

If it did the same in the next 12 years then starting salaries would be about 42K and 12 years later it would be 63K.

So, in about 35 to 40 years time starting salaries would be about 100K for IT graduates.

IT Contractors

I wonder what contractors would be on then.

The best guess would be around 300K to 400K a year as it looks as if they get around three times to four times what graduates get.

Some might be on half-a-million a year - and there may be some top notch IT Contractors on a million a year.

What footballers might be on then doesn't bear thinking about.