Salaries for tech employees working remotely are outpacing those working in the office, with pay remaining at an all-time high despite global instability, according to a new report.
Jobs search site Hired’s 2022 State of Tech Salaries: Navigating an Uncertain Hiring Market found that tech salaries are continuing to rise after a brief dip during the pandemic, and wages for remote jobs are climbing faster than standard local jobs.
For the report, Hired analysed more than 907,000 interview requests across 47,700 active positions on its platform, and also interviewed 2,000 tech professionals on salary, benefits and flexible work preferences.
The report focuses only on the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
If 2021 in the workplace centred around the great resignation, 2022 has been marked by uncertainty, volatility and contradiction, with fears of potential recessions tech hiring freezes.
But according to the Hired report, it’s so far so good for tech workers.
Salaries have risen across the board in the three jurisdictions, and it’s still a candidate’s market for now, Hired CEO Josh Brenner said.
“Employers continue to hire remote employees and enter new talent markets. In contrast, some high-profile companies have moved toward return-to-office policies, despite resistance from the majority of workers,” Brenner said.
“So as the winds shift towards an economic slowdown, will the pendulum swing more in favour of employer demands?”
Nearly 100 percent of all people surveyed said they prefer remote or hybrid work.
At the start of the year 18 percent of jobseekers said they were open to “only remote” roles. By May, this number had risen to 31 percent.
And these remote roles are paying on average $US3,000 more on average across the three countries.
Fifteen of the 17 markets analysed had higher remote salaries compared to fixed location roles. This was a jump from 13 locations last year.
The San Francisco Bay Area was the only spot in the US where local salaries are higher than remote jobs, while in London remote salaries are 3.6 percent less than fixed location roles.
Pay rise or I’m outta here
Candidates still feel empowered to ask for pay increases too, according to the survey.
Just under 90 percent of those surveyed said that if they are denied an expected pay rise in the next six months, they’d start looking for a new job immediately.
And only half said they expected this rise to come in the next year.
“They’re driven by the potential for more lucrative opportunities and an overall better fit,” Brenner said.
“Expectations on salary, pay rises and work flexibility remains sky high, placing the onus on employers to execute the right strategies to attract, hire and retain top talent.”
But this may change in the future, with more than a quarter of workers surveyed saying they believe power will shift to employers by the start of next year, while 24.3 percent believe the candidate-driven market will continue.
The study found that salaries have risen for almost all tech roles except for product management.
The San Francisco Bay Area is still leading the way, with an average local salary of $US174,063, followed by Seattle at $168,069 and New York with $161,128.
The highest paid tech role is engineering management, with an American average of $US196,000.
Out of the locations studied, Toronto and London had the highest salary increases year-on-year.
Despite these increases across the board, the surveyed employees still said that they feel like their pay doesn’t reflect the increased cost of living.
More than 40 percent of remote respondents and 29.1 percent of local respondents said they don’t feel like their salaries have kept up with rising inflation and living costs, and only just over 20 percent of the surveyed candidates strongly agreed that pay should be determined by where the candidate would be based.
Hiring time
The time it is taking companies to hire people has slowed down around the world, with it taking US companies on average 60 days to fill an opening, up from 52 days last year. In Canada, it’s 54 days and the time in the UK is slowest at 68 days.
Brenner said the research should be used by companies when re-evaluating their hiring strategies.
“Ideally, these valuable insights will inspire meaningful conversations within organisations on hiring strategies, including the structure of compensation packages, flexible work models and other talent initiatives,” he said.
“If there’s a North star in this tumultuous time, it’s that companies must be nimble when it comes to hiring. Explore new ideas, continue to rethink strategies and revise hyper-growth models into ones for efficient growth.
“It’s the best way to cultivate a steady route to recruiting and retaining top employees.”
The report backs up findings from earlier this year that fully remote tech workers are paid nearly twice as much as their full-time office counterparts. Landing.Jobs’ Global Tech Talent Trends 2022 survey found that tech professionals in every region reported higher salaries if they were fully remote or had flexible working arrangements.
This is good news for Australians, with the country leading the world in recruiting remote workers, at nearly double the global average.
