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The money trail
July 08, 2005
A News.com piece links to an interesting report from neoIT on the comparative costs of hiring IT workers in various countries. The salary numbers are striking. Here are average annual salaries (in U.S. dollars) for IT professionals with two to three years of experience:
Vietnam: $5,404
India: $8,429
China: $8,799
Thailand: $10,272
Philippines: $10,256
Romania: $13,856
Brazil: $14,351
Costa Rica: $18,242
Russia: $18,503
Mexico: $19,932
Hungary: $22,211
Poland: $26,028
South Africa: $33,360
Israel: $36,821
Canada: $40,829
Ireland: $51,963
Wages are, of course, only one of the components of overall operating costs, but they're by far the largest component, representing somewhere between 35% and 65% of total costs, according to the report. Wage inflation also tends to be highest in the cheapest countries, so current savings may evaporate over time as salary levels slowly converge. Still, with network technology making more professional work portable, it's not hard to see the attraction of offshoring.
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