I have been asked to reply.
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Colin Mowl, dated 25 March 2007:
The National Statistician has been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question asking how average salaries for IT professionals in the UK have changed over the last five years; and how these are expected to change over the next 10 years. I am replying in her absence. (129675)
Average levels of earnings are estimated from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), and are provided for full time employees on adult rates of pay whose pay for the survey period was not affected by absence. This is the standard definition used for ASHE. The ASHE does not collect information on the self-employed and people who do unpaid work.
The attached table shows Gross Weekly Pay, for all full time employees classified as IT professionals for the years 2002-2006. Estimates on how earnings are expected to change are not available.
IT professionals are defined as minor group 213 in the Standard Occupational Classification 2000 - “Information and Communication Technology Professionals”. This classification group includes the occupations “IT Strategy and Planning Professionals”, for example computer consultants, and “Software Professionals”, for example computer programmers.
The ASHE, carried out in April each year, is the most comprehensive source of earnings information in the United Kingdom. It is a one per cent sample of all employees who are members of pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) schemes.
Gross weekly pay Median Mean 2002 605 661 2003 618 674 2004 excl 636 693 2004 incc 632 683 2005 656 706 2006 690 746 Notes: a Employees on adult rates whose pay for the survey pay-period was not affected by absence. b ‘IT professionals’. c In 2004 additional supplementary surveys were introduced to improve the coverage of the annual survey of hours and earnings. Figures are preserved both excluding and including the additional surveys for comparison purposes. Guide to quality: The Coefficient of Variation (CV) indicates the quality of a figure, the smaller the CV value the higher the quality. The true value is likely to be within +/- twice the CV—for example, for an average of 200 with a CV of 5 per cent., we would expect the population average to be within the range 180 to 220. All of the figures on this table have a CV of less than 5 per cent. The median is the value below which 50 per cent. fall. It is preferred over the mean for earnings data as it is influenced less by extreme values and because of the skewed distribution of earnings data. Source: Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, Office for National Statistics