Comparative salaries of IT employees in the Philippines

Are you paid enough as an IT manager or systems developer in the Philippines?

The 2008 salary survey of IT workers in the Philippines will tell you.

According to the comparative IT Salary and Skills Report 2008 conducted by ZDNet Asia, the average annual IT salary in the Philippines is P500,736 (US$12,425) although this median figure varies significantly by industry, years of experience and size of employer.

Across eight countries in the Asia Pacific, six have higher salaries than the Philippines: Australia (US$76,851); Hong Kong (US$57,303); Singapore (US$44,858); Thailand (US$24,108); Malaysia (US$22,582); and India (US$13,864). The Philippines (US$12,425) is higher only than Indonesia (US$7,709).

As seen in the table below, those in IT Management have the highest average annual salary (P995,940), followed by Project Management (P521,982), Systems Development (P424,944), Other IT Professional (P406,660), Communications (P390,348), and Support (P390,348).

Table 1. Average Annual Salary by Job Function and Employment Status

Those working in the Legal and Finance sector have the highest annual average salary (P667,519), followed by those in IT, Web and Telecom (P520,612). Those in Government, Education and Health unsurprisingly have the lowest average salary (P290,300).

Table 2. Average Annual Salary by Job Function and Industry

IT skills were also considered in the survey. The top 5 IT skills in the Philippines are Application Development, Desktop/Software, Web Development, Database Management, and System Administration. Those with Application Development skills receive the highest average annual salary (P599,449) followed by those with System Administration skills (P512,278).

Table 3. Average Annual Salary of the Top 5 IT Skills in the Philippines

A total of 2,521 respondents participated in the survey. They came from a wide variety of IT professions, industry sectors, and company sizes. Some 92.6% of the respondents were working full-time, while the rest were contractors and independent consultants.