April 26, 2006 Careers: Pay Gap Is Closing Between Certified And Noncertified Tech Skills, Says Report By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee Courtesy of InformationWeek Historically, having formal certification in specific IT skills meant a boost in pay for many tech workers. But now the pay gap between certified and non-certified skills seems to be shrinking, according to a new report by research firm Foote Partners LLC. Over the last year, pay for non-certified IT skills grew nearly 70% more than pay for certifications, or 4.4% versus 2.6% respectively, according to the Foote survey, which tracked the market value of 212 IT skills and certifications. Based on the salary analysis of 52,000 IT professionals at 1,820 North American companies, Foote found that premium pay for 103 non-certified skills in the first quarter of 2006 averaged about 7.1% of base salary for a single skill, up from 6.8% in the same quarter last year. Among the non-certified skill categories examined were networking, operating systems, database, and Web development. While certified skills still garner a bigger average pay premium—or about 8.3% of base pay for a single skill—compared with non-certified skills, the pay gap appears to be closing, according to Foote. This seems to indicate that some employers are beginning to more generously reward for tech workers who have solid technical, industry, and business experience yet lack formal certification for their skill sets, according to Foote. During the economic downturn in the early part of this decade, many companies preferred keeping and hiring IT workers with certifications, says Foote. However, now, some companies are finding they have fewer staffers in their IT organizations who have solid customer-facing, business and process skills. "That's where the money is being diverted," president and chief research officer David Foote said in an E-mail. E-mail This Story Print This Story Reprint This Story Average IT Manager Makes $99,000, Staffer $73,000, InformationWeek Survey Finds How Does Your Pay Compare? Use Our IT Salary Advisor More U.S. Workers Have IT Jobs Than Ever Before Get the latest Developer news, product info, and trends every week.			In A Reversal, Feds Says Outsourced Programmers Are Eligible For Assistance Job Market Booming For Skilled IT Professionals Microsoft Pushes SQL Server Toward Continuous Hot Availability IT Employment Reaches Record High In U.S. Web App Hack Incidents Are Up As Businesses Take Cover Business Objects Offers On-Demand Reports     Developer Pipeline's Main RSS Feed     Developer Pipeline's Blog RSS Feed VIEW ALL BRIEFING CENTERS Editorial and vendor perspectives Special Report: Are Computers Destroying The Earth? With Earth Day just around the corner, two reporters cross swords over the question of whether computers and technology are helping or hurting the environment. See what they have to say, then vote on who's got it right. Embedded Experts: Fix Code Bugs Or Cost Lives Apple's Boot Camp: Macs Do Windows Microsoft Platforms Chief Talks Co-opetition With Open Source Crash Course: Get a Handle on Web Services Specs and Standards How do recent stories highlighting the ability of Apple's new Intel-based Macs to run Windows as well as Mac OS X affect your view of Macs as development platforms? Macs that can run Windows and OS X? Gimme!     39% Yawn. No thanks.     22% It all comes down to price point. Count me as maybe.     17% Ha. If it doesn't run zOS or Solaris, forget it...     12% Apple? Never! TRS-80 RULEZ!     10% E-fficiency: Web App IDEs Want to give your e-business a competitive edge? Turbo-charge your development projects with one of these Web application development IDEs. Web Site Development Made Easy A "Class" Act: Software IDEs