IT Salary Tracker: Help desk professionals

Help desk pros are among the lowest paid IT workers, in some cases making as little as teachers and social workers. Perhaps this is fitting, since helping users in distress sometimes requires as much counseling as it does systems troubleshooting. But despite their relatively low ranking on the IT salary scale, help desk pros are in strong demand. And unlike many IT job types which are strongly clustered around New York and Silicon Valley, that demand is evenly distributed among the major urban centers. The five cities with the greatest need each held 10% or more of almost 700 total listings for help desk pros in June 2000, according to dice.com, Datamation’s sister site and an online job board for IT professionals.

In the same month, employers were offering help desk pros an average salary of $48,000 per year and an average contract rate of $23 per hour, exactly the same as in December 1999. Results are based on 696 listings for this type of professional. The highest wages were in New York, where help desk pro salaries were $52,000 per year on average, and contract rates averaged $34 per hour. Fully 38% of employer listings sought Microsoft NT experience. Notably, there were no Windows 2000 jobs posted.

Results are based on averages or totals from the following information at dice.com: job titles, job skills, and locations. Benefits are not included in compensation listings.

Highest salary by city (average):
New York, $52,000 yearly salary

Highest hourly contract rate by city (average):
New York, $34 per hour

City with the most demand:
Silicon Valley, 17% of total availabilities

Job skill with the most demand:
Microsoft NT, 38% of total availabilities

Chart data compiled by Laurie Souza.

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