IT workers saw fastest salary increases in 2011 for three years

Salaries for professionals working in the IT sector rose at their quickest pace since 2008, bucking the trend of an otherwise gloomy financial outlook, according to new figures from CWJobs.co.uk, released exclusively to V3.

This salary rise was driven by a growth in demand for several key skill sets, with developers in particularly seeing a big increase in demands, making up 41 per cent of all IT jobs advertised in 2011.

The ability to work in the SQL programming language was the most sought after skill within this area, accounting for 20,286 job postings.

Elsewhere demand for workers able to use software development methodology Agile increased by 59 per cent in the number of permanent job postings over the year, demonstrating its growing use in the industry.

CWJobs said its data had been collected from numerous recruitment web sites, as well as from print publications and the firm's web site director, Richard Nott, said the statistics show the IT sector is helping boost the UK economy.

"Last year the spotlight was on the IT industry, particularly on areas such as security and mobile. As new issues and opportunities continue to shape the sector, skills requirements and job opportunities will change accordingly," he said.

"While there's no denying the impact the economy has had on the rate of growth, these statistics show that there's recovery happening and the private sector and the South East of England are leading this."

The number of IT jobs in London also increased by 28 per cent, according to the data, which could be in part due to the increased investment in the Tech City initiative in East London.

But the outlook has not been as positive for the public sector, which has now experienced nine consecutive quarters of decline, with a 16 per cent decrease in the number of vacancies in the last quarter of 2011.

That decline comes against the backdrop of swingeing cuts in public sector spending.