Philippine IT workers enjoy competitive salaries

IT professionals in the Philippines are receiving above-average salaries compared to their counterparts in other professions, but most of them lack the IT certification their peers in the region have acquired, according to a survey conducted by ZDNet Asia.

The ZDNet Asia IT Salary Benchmark Survey 2008 revealed that IT employees in the Philippines earned an average annual salary of US$12,425 (500,736 peso).

This wage level, high by national standards, put the country in sixth place after Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and India, which have annual salaries of between US$13,864 and US$76,851. The Philippines is just a notch higher over last placer Indonesia, which had a US$7,709 average annual salary.

According to the National Statistics Office, the average annual income of Filipino families in 2006 was estimated at 172,000 peso (US$3,939).

The Philippines, however, was ranked at the bottom in another category with just 24 percent of the respondents saying they had at least one IT certification from a technology vendor or institution. Hong Kong topped the list with 48.9 percent, while Indonesia was able to dodge the pit with 28.6 percent.

A total of 2,521 IT professionals from the Philippines participated in the survey. They came from various industry sectors, across a range of job types, and from different company sizes. Some 92.6 percent of the respondents were working full-time, while the rest were contractors and independent consultants.

The ZDNet Asia survey found a correlation between years of experience, a higher education level, and a good salary. Those who had more than 10 years of experience enjoyed an average annual salary of 95,113 peso (US$2,178). The average number of years of experience among the Filipinos IT workers surveyed was 6.3 years.

Similarly, the survey indicated that larger companies generally gave higher compensation, compared to businesses with fewer employees. Respondents working in large companies, with more than 1,000 employees, commanded the highest average annual salary at 556,529 peso (US$12,745), followed by those in midsize companies (with between 100 and 999 employees) at 516,882 peso (US$11,837) and small companies (with fewer than 100 employees) at 456,183 peso (US$10,447).

Among sectors, the study said respondents from the legal and finance sector commanded the highest average annual salaries with 667,519 peso (US$15,286), followed by those in IT, Web and telecom with 520,612 peso (US$11,922). Those in government, education and health had the lowest average annual salary of 290,300 peso (US$6,648).

The study found that more than half (52.1 percent) of Filipino IT professionals had application development skills, nearly half (46 percent) have desktop/software skills, and more than one-third (38.4 percent) had Web development skills.

The report also noted that respondents who were contract/independent consultants in IT management, project management, communications, and other IT professionals, had higher average annual salaries than those who worked full-time at a company, while those in systems development and support earned less.

Melvin G. Calimag is a freelance IT writer based in the Philippines.

IT Salary Benchmark Survey 2008
ZDNet Asia conducted an online survey between late-2007 and early-2008 to gain insights into Asia's IT workforce and salary trends. It drew 21,635 respondents from sectors such as government, healthcare, IT, services, telecommunications, legal and finance, and across seven Asian economies: Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

Some 2,521 respondents were polled from the Philippines, 64.2 percent of whom held jobs in the IT, Web and telecom sectors.

Note: In the following charts, PHP denotes the Philippine peso.