The average tech job salary in the Phoenix metro was the 13th highest in the nation between 2022 and 2023, jumping 1.7%, according to a new report from industry employment platform Dice.
The 2024 Dice Tech Salary Report found that Phoenix has an average tech salary of $116,559. The Valley’s year-over-year bump defied a trend of pay drops in some of the nation’s biggest tech hubs. For instance, Silicon Valley’s $141,618 average salary is the highest in the country, but it’s also 2.3% lower than in 2022.
Phoenix’s 2023 tech salary increase was a major slowdown from the previous year, when compensation in the Valley’s tech sector surged more than 26% to lead the nation in gains.
Other major tech hubs also saw drops in average salaries in 2023. Seattle was down 5.3%, Boston was down 3.6%, New York City was down 1.4% — while Austin, Texas dropped a whopping 12.8% and Charlotte, North Carolina, was down 11.5%.
Dice said the influx of tech workers to a tech hub such as Austin, which has experienced a lot of tech sector growth in recent years, can end up bringing compensation down when employers have a larger pool of professionals to hire from.
Surge in new tech jobs can put pressure on salaries
While tech salaries rose in the Valley, Arizona saw an overall salary drop of 6.1%, with the statewide average coming in at $109,012. Dice said that reversed some of the noticeable growth seen in the state between 2021 and 2022. Even so, the Grand Canyon State’s average was in the top half of the nation, at No. 24.
Nationally, the average tech salary was $111,193, which was a drop of $155 from 2022.
Dice said the drop was likely caused by multiple factors. For one, salaries had jumped 9% between 2019 and 2021, and then in 2021 there was a significant increase in the number of tech positions.
“Tech companies everywhere were flush with cash and used those funds to hire and acquire aggressively; some tech giants even hired specialists beyond their needs solely to keep them from being hired by rivals,” Dice wrote in its report.
Since then, organizations have cut back on tech spending and more than 211,000 jobs were eliminated in 2023, according to CompTIA numbers cited in Dice’s report.
Dice said the salary growth outside of established tech cities is in line with a trend of workers moving to less expensive, up-and-coming locations.
Besides those tech workers in major hubs, the salary stagnation affected professionals with five or fewer years of experience the most, Dice said.
The tech sector seeing the largest pay was aerospace and defense — a key sector in Arizona with large companies such as Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Honeywell Aerospace and Boeing having major operations here. The average salary was up 7.4% in that sector, nationally coming in at $130,574.
Other top-paying tech sectors include software (national average $130,559, up 5.2%), medical/pharmaceutical/biotechnology ($128,141, down 0.8%) and bank/finance ($126,226, down 1.8%).
Dice said its survey was administered online and was based on information from more than 6,000 surveys. Job posting data from Lightcast was also used.
