IT roles pay highest salaries

A tight labour market means those in already high-earning roles are getting more money as an incentive to stay.

But people working in lower paying roles, such as hospitality and retail, have had the highest wage growth in the past two years.

At the beginning of the year, Trade Me Jobs sales director Matt Tolich predicted the information technology sector would likely continue to offer the highest paid jobs. He was right.

‘‘So far in 2022 IT roles are continuing to pay the most, as we have seen consistently over the past couple of years,’’ he said.

In both the first and second quarters of this year, all five of the highest-paying roles on the site were in the IT sector.

The average pay in the IT sector had climbed 3% year-on-year in Q2 to reach $120,365.

IT architects were the highest earners with an average salary of $185,187, followed by management at $163,708, project management at $161,605, business and systems analysts at $152,930 and data warehousing at $146,618.

‘‘The tech industry is really feeling the brunt of the talent shortage and salaries are skyrocketing as a result,’’ Tolich said.

‘‘On top of this, closed borders over the past couple of years have put pressure on the tech industry by preventing new talent from entering the country to meet the sector’s growing needs.’’

The highest-paying positions outside the IT industry in the second quarter were for executive and general management roles, which had an average salary of $123,318.

Not far behind were management roles in the engineering sector, which had an average salary of $119,672.

Project and contract management roles in the construction and roading sector had an average salary of $117,294.

‘‘At the end of the day, money talks and paying competitive salaries has proven to be lucrative and an effective tool for attracting and retaining talent in the current market,’’ Tolich said.

But Westpac acting chief economist Michael Gordon and Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan said the sectors with the fastest pay growth in recent times were hospitality and retail.

‘‘The reasons for that are, one, the prevalence of minimum wage or near-minimum wage jobs in that sector, so that large pay rises have been widespread, boosting the average; and two, genuine shortages of labour, given the sector’s reliance on the migrant and working holiday crowd in the years before Covid,’’ Gordon said.

‘‘Other areas where we’ve seen larger than average pay rises are healthcare and construction, which are at neither the high nor the low end compared to average pay rates.’’

Data from Infometrics showed workers with skill level 5, which is equal to NCEA level one or a short period of on the job training, had a 9.3% increase in labour cost since March 2020.

Those with a bachelor degree or five years of relevant work experience received the lowest increase of 4.8%. Kiernan said this was down to minimum wage increases, a worker shortage and a public sector wage freeze.

The average pay in the IT sector had climbed 3% year-on-year to reach $120,365.