IT graduates battling for higher salaries in London

Like a lot of other industries in the UK, graduates moving to London can expect a higher than average salary. The bad news, of course, is that they’ll have to fight off a lot of competition to achieve it.

According to research, a 1st Line Support/Helpdesk role based in London W2 will pay £27,373, compared to the UK average of £22,472. Meanwhile a CRM position in central London will earn a worker £65,000, while the average salary is £47,052. A cabling engineer, according to the website, can expect to earn £39,363, compared to the national average of £28,873. Even a 1st Line Support/Helpdesk role in EC2 (there was only one job listed) pays £11 per hour. Meanwhile the UK average for the same position (for which there were 27 jobs listed) would earn a worker £9.09 per hour.

IT graduates working in the City of London can expect an even larger pay packet. According to the IT Job Board, the largest website for IT recruitment, average salaries for IT jobs in London are around £47,500, rising to £54,000 in the City. IT jobs in banking pay an average of £70,000 for permanent positions and £500 daily for contractors, they say, a “testament to the importance of IT in finance and the importance of finance to London”.

e-Skills UK, the Sector Skills Council for Business and Information Technology, says one in every 17 people working in England is employed in IT or telecoms. There are over one million people working in IT jobs in UK - just under 900,000 people working in the UK’s IT sector and almost 600,000 working as IT or telecoms professionals in other industries.

According to research released in February, the number of permanent IT jobs advertised grew by 4.6 per cent between the third and final quarters of 2010. Over the same period, the number of IT contract jobs available grew by 0.9 per cent. Contract rates continued to improve throughout 2010, with median rates up five per cent, compared to the same period 12 months ago.

Over 40 per cent of IT jobs are located in London, one of the world’s biggest financial hubs, as well as the South East.

Increased rewards also comes with increased competition; a record 32 people are applying for every job in London on average, more than three times the amount for any other region, The Telegraph reported last June.