Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 22:23:10 -0800 From: Norm Matloff To: Norm Matloff Subject: starting salaries lower in 2005 than 2001 To: H-1B/L-1/offshoring e-newsletter Recall my posting from yesterday, concerning the fact that Microsoft salaries are not up this year in spite of a labor shortage claimed by Bill Gates. See http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/MicrosoftSalaries.txt Sure doesn't sound like a shortage, does it? The enclosed blog from BusinessWeek also contradicts the industry lobbyists' claims of a tech labor shortage. It also contradicts the claim made by the ACM that the job market today is just as good as during the dot-com boom. See my commentary on that claim, at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/ACMStudy.txt Norm http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2005/09/good_time_to_le.html BusinessWeek Economics Unbound September 15, 2005 Good time to learn accounting? [michael_mandel.jpg] Michael Mandel Yesterday the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) released their final salary report for the College Class of 2005, listing the average starting salary offers to new grads, by major. Just for fun, I decided to compare these numbers with what new grads were getting in 2001, just as the bust was gathering speed. My source was the comparable NACE press release in fall of 2001 (located here). And then I adjusted for inflation. Here's what I found: [Note from NM: I haven't included his graph here; see above URL. But here is the data from the graph: CHANGE IN REAL STARTING SALARIES, 2001-2005 Computer Engineering -12.0% Electrical Engineering -10.2% Psychology -9.3% Sociology -4.1% Computer Science -12.7% Marketing -6.5% Business Administration -5.7% Accounting -2.3% ] Everything is negative of course. The biggest declines came in the computer-related majors--no surprise there. And the relatively strong performance of accounting (the bottom bar, somewhat obscured) is no surprise either. But why should psychology have nose-dived so completely? And why is sociology doing relatively better? Inquiring minds want to know.