Despite the salaries remaining relatively flat, the job satisfaction is higher in the USA, amongst technology Professionals.

The outbreak of COVID 19 has rendered many organizations to observe their economic strategy, thus rendering them to reduce the Operational framework, and reducing the workforce. As a result, many of the employees were either sacked, or were subjected to a reduced income due to cost-cutting measures by organizations.

The USA, which has the highest number of COVID 19 cases, is reeling with another major crisis of unemployment. As of the time, this article is published, the data released by Department of Labour, 58 million people have sought aid for employment, with about 1 million people filing initial claims for unemployment benefits. As COVID 19 has pushed many sectors, to deploy different measures for cost-cutting and saving up money, the technology has been an area, which has observed, a steady growth of job satisfaction despite the low salary.  A report released by IEEE-USA Salary & Benefits Survey, states that despite the salaries remaining relatively flat, the job satisfaction is higher.

Income in Different areas

For the year 2019, Tech professionals working in consumer- electronics, are observed to be having the highest median income according to the survey, thus accounting to US$185000. The salary of the respondents, working in Machine Learning, dropped from US$185000 in 2018, to US$130,800 in 2019. A similar pattern was also observed with the Tech educators, whose income saw a median shift of US$105,707, thus falling to the bottom of this survey. The median salary of those involved with the engineering management accounted to US$165,500, and with Data science as a career option, accounted for US$157,000. The median salary for any individual involved with Robotics and automation, accounted for US$134,000.

Gender Gap in Salary Persists

One of the biggest challenge in any sector, to be acknowledged is the gender gap. It becomes important to address this challenge, not only because of income disparity but due to the fact that it involves another major half of the society.

The female as Tech Professionals who participated in the survey, involves only 8.6% women of the total employed as working full time in the primary area of technical concept, thus indicating a red-siren about the existing gender gap. The overall difference in the median salary of male and female employees was 18% in the year 2018, accounting for US$19,000. This salary gap has observed a surge for the year 2019, accounting for US$22,500.

A recent study by Hired states that of 2400 job candidates being surveyed, more than 63% of women interviewed has faced discrimination in company leadership and salaries, as compared to the 7% of men. According to the survey, 50% of female employees complains about getting paid unfairly, 30% complains about biases during interviews, 26% have experienced sexual harassment and 76% complaints of not being taken seriously, specifically not being considered in the leadership role.

Another study done by Dice, has observed that except in Minnesota, the women tech-professional are being subjected to unfair income payment. Utah has the largest gender-based salary difference accounting for US$16,871, followed by Alabama which has a gender-based salary difference of US$16,660. This is not only alarming, but indicates towards a major loophole in a blooming sector. The gender gap has been witnessed in every segment of the tech world, but is close to the finish line in Cloud engineering, systems architecture, and network engineering.

Job Dominance with Areas

The IEEE survey has observed Pacific Region to be a blooming area for the Tech Professional’s with a median salary of US$ 171,000, thus observing a surge of US$2300 in the year 2018. The California is at the top amongst the state rankings, with a median salary of US$180,684, with an increase of slightly less that US$1000 from 2018.

Conclusion

Thus despite the many factors indicating an increase in job satisfaction in the Tech sector, it is evident that there are yet many challenges in terms of gender, race and area that needs to be encountered.