Developer salaries in the U.S. rose last year for the first time since 2009 as software developers continued to enter the workforce, according to a new report by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
The median pay for software developers in the United States rose by $15,700 over the past year, while salaries for non-software developers grew by only $6,300, according a study released Tuesday by the firm.
The gains were driven by rising wages, and the study, which looked at more than 2,000 software developers’ earnings, shows that software developers earned $25,400 in 2012 and $24,900 in 2013, a jump of more than $1,300.
The median wage in the industry increased by nearly $1 per hour over the same time period, according the report.
A total of 6.7 million U.s. software developers worked in 2012, up from 4.4 million in 2011, McKinsey noted in its report.
The industry was once dominated by small firms and software firms with offices in the South and Midwest.
But the number of companies that are now based in Silicon Valley and New York City has exploded.
In the past several years, tech companies have started expanding in areas that are traditionally dominated by traditional companies, like finance, health care and consumer products.
While those areas were once largely dominated by smaller firms, those companies have also seen an explosion of spending on tech and other products, such as robotics, artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence-enabled services, the report said.
The data was collected from 2013 to 2016, and was based on interviews with 2,811 people who were working in software development for more than a year.