The 10 highest-paying industries for IT talent

Average salary: US$121,560

Increase since 2021: +2.9%

6. Consumer products 

The consumer products industry has seen massive growth in IT salaries, rising just over 14% since 2021, buoyed by a high demand for talent. Knowledge areas especially vital to the consumer products industry include e-commerce, digital marketing, supply chain management, and mobile app development. Other relevant roles include security professionals, project managers, UX/UI designers, product managers, data analysts, and business analysts. There’s a demand for skills around product optimization, customer service management, tracking digital and marketing trends, demand forecasting, data-driven decision making, improving efficiency, lowering costs, and navigating supply-chain management.

Average salary: US$121,052

Increase since 2021: +14.4%

7. Entertainment

At first thought, you might not think of the entertainment industry as having a high demand for IT roles, but there’s plenty of need for skilled tech professionals. Technology is a cornerstone to developing movies, video games, live events, music, and television shows. There’s typically a high demand for multimedia developers, video game developers, virtual reality developers, and production technologists. There’s also a growing need for streaming platform engineers, now that streaming services dominate for TV and movies. Other vital roles include project manager, security specialist, web developer, data analyst, and systems administrator.

Average salary: US$119,921

Increase since 2021: +0.1%

8. Utilities/Energy

You’ll find demand for some unique job titles in the utilities and energy industries, including SCADA engineer, renewable energy engineer, smart metering specialist, grid modernization specialist, energy data analyst, energy efficient consultant, GIS specialist, and energy storage engineer. There’s also a demand for more typical IT roles such as project manager, data scientist, cybersecurity professional, RPA developer, IoT engineer, asset management specialist, data center manager, and more. The industry has a demand for highly-skilled IT pros who have the skills and knowledge to navigate complex and technical systems and networks.

Average salary: US$118,498

Increase since 2021: +3.6%

9. Telecommunications

IT jobs are a natural fit for the telecommunications industry, given that it is fully dependent on technology. You’ll find demand for nearly every IT job you can think of, including project manager, software developer, systems analyst, network engineer, security specialist, data analyst, radio frequency (RF) engineer, cloud engineer, and consultants. There’s a broad range of job roles available, and you’ll be hard pressed to find an IT job title that doesn’t fall under the umbrella of telecommunications. And for an industry that has relied on technology since the start, there has still been a nearly 7% increase in the average tech salary since 2021, suggesting the demand only continues to grow.

Average salary: US$115,940

Increase since 2021: +6.8%

10. Insurance

As insurance companies turn to digital services, the industry has seen growth in demand for IT workers who can help build, deploy, and maintain internal and external apps and services. In order to meet the growing demand for tech talent, companies such as Progressive have invested in internal upskilling bootcamp programs to help close the skills gap. Similar to the healthcare industry, the insurance industry deals with a high volume of often sensitive and confidential data, so there’s typically a demand for cybersecurity and data workers, in addition to developers and engineers. And as more insurance companies develop client-facing apps and services, there’s a need for UX/UI designers, developers, and engineers.

Average salary: US$114,522

Increase since 2021: 0%