Tech Salaries Among Leaders in New BLS Occupations

Five Tips to Really Negotiate a Higher Salary

It’s often hard to figure out where or how IT jobs are counted in the federal employment reports, but the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking 24 new occupations since 2010.

One of the largest is computer network support specialist, with nearly 168,000 jobs in May 2012. The mean salary for folks who analyze, test and maintain a variety of wireless computer networks is $62,960 or $28.41 an hour, BLS reports.

Other new tech positions in the report:

• Computer network architects earn $94,000 annually or $43.75 an hour.
• Information security analysts, $89,290 annually or $41.43 an hour.
• Web developers, $66,100 annually or $30.05 an hour.

These workers are in demand. During the first quarter, the unemployment rate for network and system administrators stood at just 3.1 percent, at 1.7 percent for network architects, and at 1 percent for web developers, the BLS reported.

Tech occupations were not the overall salary leader, however. That distinction goes to nurse anesthetists with a mean annual salary of $154,390, with other nursing specializations also ranking highly.

The new tech categories were among the highest paying, though — the report notes computer user support specialists earn a mean annual wage of $50,130.

It also pointed to software publishers, though small companies, among the highest-paying industries, with a mean wage of $91,050. Software publishers tend to employ systems software developers ($104,960), applications software developers ($99,140), and market research analysts and marketing specialists ($88,670).