The average technology worker in the Austin metro area makes $98,672 a year, according to an online survey done in late 2015 by Dice, a career website for the tech industry. That's up nearly 6 percent from 2014.
First, a few caveats before we dig into the data further. Dice administered the survey nationally in October and November of 2015 and had 16,301 respondents. It's not clear how many came from Austin and how they defined "tech." Nevertheless, some of their conclusions about tech wages offer some interesting insights.
Here's how Dice breaks down the tech industry salary growth in Austin from 2007 to 2015:
By comparison, according to data from the federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average Travis County resident makes $58,338. For Williamson County, the average resident made $48,808. (Both figures come from annualized wage data from the third quarter of last year.)
Kids, the lesson here is: If you want to make money, think about majoring in computer programming.
Austin tech salaries were ranked 10th nationally, according to Dice, with cities or regions such as Silicon Valley, New York and even Minneapolis and Portland paying higher average annual wages.
A more accurate, but not as recent, data set on tech salaries in Austin vs. other cities is available courtesy the Austin Technology Council and Civic Analytics, a local economics consulting firm. But their data is from 2013 wage information.
Credit: Lilly Rockwell
Credit: Lilly Rockwell
If you aren't sick of tech salary data yet, you might want to check out the chart below, which is based on Bureau of Labor Statistics information on tech worker salaries. This data has its own drawbacks, such as not counting some people as "tech"who work for a software company because their job involves sales or marketing.
Here's what the Bureau of Labor Statistics Data says about Austin tech worker salaries by various occupations:
If you know of other good data sets on tech worker salaries in Austin, reach out to me at lrockwell@statesman.com.
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