Numbers, we ve got numbers. One report shows just how well tech jobs paid last year. But another report shows a lot of those jobs went up in smoke in 2014.
U.S. tech industry jobs paid an average of $89,450 in 2014, a rise of 2 percent from 2013, according to tech jobs website Dice. In Silicon Valley, that figure was even higher: $112,610.
But wait, there s more. The survey of more than 23,000 tech professionals, taken in fall 2014, also found increases in bonuses: 37 percent of respondents said they received bonuses, compared with 34 percent in 2013; the average bonus amount in the U.S. was $9,538, up 2 percent from the previous year. The average bonus in Silicon Valley? $14,238.
But 2014 also saw plenty of tech industry layoffs. In fact, the number of announced layoffs last year, 100,757, was the highest since 2009, according to career outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The tech sector contributed more than a fifth of all job cuts last year.
Oddly, the technology sector was among the stronger segments of the economy in 2014 and is likely to be a source for continued growth and job creation in 2015, John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a press release. However, we did see several large scale layoff announcements from tech giants, including 18,000 from Microsoft and 16,000 from Hewlett-Packard, which has now shed more than 50,000 workers since 2013,
Computer industry cuts announced last year also included Cisco s 6,000 layoffs and Symantec s more than 2,000 layoffs, as we wrote on SiliconBeat. (Note: Many companies that have global workforces don t provide information about where the slashing is happening.) Other tech sector job cuts were in the telecom and electronics industries.
The Challenger report points out that analysts expect strong job growth in the tech industry this year, citing an InformationWeek survey that showed rising demand in IT workers and spending in 2015.
However, in Silicon Valley, we just got news yesterday of more job cuts in the computer industry: eBay announced it would cut 2,400 jobs, or 7 percent of its workforce.
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