According to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics on May 9, in 2022, the average annual salary of employees in urban non-private units across the country will be 114,029 yuan, an increase of 6.7% over the previous year, and a real increase of 4.6% after deducting inflation. Among them, the gap between industries is quite obvious. According to the data, in 2022, whether in private or non-private units, the top three industries with the annual average salary level of employees are information transmission, software and information technology services with high technology content (IT industry ), financial industry, scientific research and technical service industry.
Chart source: National Bureau of Statistics
In the figure above, the average annual salary of employees in the information transmission, software and information technology service industry (IT industry) in 2022 will be 220,418 yuan, which is equivalent to nearly twice the annual average salary of the entire industry, and the growth rate of 9.4% is also comparable to the horizontal comparison. gratifying. Although there are many remarks on the Internet like "Internet winter", "IT collapsed", and "IT industry's high salary is unsustainable", actual statistics show that in 2023 today, IT is still a very important industry. Promising industry.
Why is the IT industry so highly paid?
High salaries in the IT industry seem to have become a social consensus. But there are also many people who have expressed doubts about this. Obviously, it is also a technical job, and the salary of programmers is much higher than that of manufacturing practitioners. Why? In fact, this is related to the IT industry itself.
1. Low cost
Compared with traditional manufacturing industries, the Internet industry has lower costs. For example, if you want to start a shoe manufacturer, the bulk of your spending must be on hardware. It is necessary to purchase factory buildings, purchase machines, water, electricity, and maintenance costs when the machines are turned on. These add up to almost astronomical figures. In the case of the same profit, as the factory manager, if you want to expand the production scale, you must reduce labor costs, which leads to the fact that your salary will not be too high.
But the software industry is just the opposite. There is very little expenditure on hardware. You only need to rent a few offices, buy some computers and servers, and start working. It is more convenient to expand production. Just buy more computers and hire more people. There is no need to save on wages. In addition, the quality of software products depends entirely on programmers, so the boss will increase the salary of programmers in order to ensure the quality.
2. High profits
Our life is inseparable from IT, and the IT industry has created considerable value. When it comes to the most profitable companies now, everyone will think of Internet giants. Alibaba, which relies on online shopping, can create a turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars every year on Double Eleven; ByteDance’s short video platform Douyin relies on traffic to make a lot of money; the most familiar national-level mobile game King of Glory , generating $2.2 billion in revenue in 2022 alone.
In addition, most Internet products can minimize marginal costs and maximize marginal profits because they do not rely on entities. For example, a software that is downloaded for a fee, the producer can sell countless copies of the software without adding any cost, neither offline stores nor waiters are required, and consumers can download it on the official website after purchasing. This makes the software industry a kind of profiteering industry in a sense. The higher the profit, the higher the wages of employees will naturally be.
Can programmers' high salaries last?
At present, there is such a saying on the Internet that the high salary in the IT industry is the result of demand expansion in a short period of time. In other words, it is now on the wind, and when the wind is gone, the salary of programmers will return to normal levels. There is some truth to this statement, but programmer salaries are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.
- Informatization and digitization are still the general trend
According to the statistics of Zhihu netizens, in the text of "The 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People's Republic of China and Outline of Long-term Objectives for 2035" (that is, the 14th Five-Year Plan), "science and technology" appears 89 times, " "Talent", "modernization" appeared 53 times, "technological innovation", "Internet", "emerging industries" appeared 12 times, and "digital xx" (digital economy, digital ecology, digitalization, digital society, digital government) appeared A total of 46 times, the frequency is much higher than the 4 times of "real estate". It shows that the country attaches great importance to IT technology. In the near future, the IT industry will still become the main force of development and create more wealth.
2. Programmers are highly technical and less substitutable
Programmers have a threshold, and the learning cost is relatively high. It is also mental work, and the threshold for clerical positions such as the front desk, personnel, and operations is relatively low, it is easy to get started, and at the same time, it is also highly replaceable. However, programmers need to undergo systematic training before they can take up their jobs. They are highly technical, have relatively high thresholds, and are even less substitutable. Coupled with the rapid upgrading of IT technology, programmers must continue to learn and improve their capabilities. In the final analysis, the core of programmers' high salaries lies in technology, and technology creates high value. As long as programmers maintain their monopoly on technology, high salaries will continue.
