Predictions for IT super salaries in Romania. What experts say about the global crisis leading to huge layoffs in the US

Despite the international context and the worrisome trend of stagnation in the rate of employment in Romanian IT, the researchers from Cluj claim that there is little chance that the salaries of Romanian programmers will decrease.

The researchers from the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, within the Romanian Economic Monitor platform, published, the other day, a report in which it is shown that in the international context in which 684 IT professionals are fired per day in the USA, there a worrying trend of slowing down the pace of employment in Romanian IT.

The university students also noted that salaries in the IT field in Romania are more than double the national average, being considered high even compared to other countries in the region.

In addition, due to the very high demand for specialists in Romania, a significant increase in salaries in IT was reached, although part of the staff was on the “bench”, that is, they were not involved in the company’s projects for certain periods of time, it shows Romanian Economic Monitor.

Under these conditions, “Adevărul” asked researcher Dr. Rácz Béla-Gergely, from the Romanian Economic Monitor, what will happen to the salaries of Romanian IT professionals.

He argues that wages are unlikely to fall in nominal terms. “We believe that average salaries in IT will still grow more slowly than in other economic sectors, especially if the structure of employees in this sector does not change. But if the layoffs apply to lower-wage workers, a significant increase in the average wage in the IT sector is still possible”Rácz explained.

“The provisions did not necessarily apply to high-wage employees”

According to the researcher, there are at least two important reasons for this development:

“On the one hand, layoffs so far (and those to come) have not necessarily applied to high-wage workers, so it may even be the case that with workforce downsizing and downsizing among lower-wage workers, average wages in Let IT continue to grow”.

On the other hand, although inflation has decreased significantly recently, it is still relatively high (currently Romania has the highest annual inflation rate in the entire EU), respectively there is a large labor shortage in other markets.

“These two factors push the average salary up in the entire national economy”the specialist believes.

Romanian IT must move from outsourcing to innovation

The Romanian Economic Monitor report shows that we will also witness a reconfiguration of the market, in which IT companies will have to move from outsourcing projects to creating their own innovations, a process already started by several important players in this sector.

Racz was asked how feasible it is for small firms with up to 10 employees to ditch outsourcing and start innovating.

“Smaller IT companies often provide services that they have served other small and medium-sized companies with (eg, website development, IT security), so their situation is less dependent on international trends. Usually, larger companies have taken care of most of the outsourcing projects, companies that in the current context could change their business model towards the realization of their own innovations, as they have both the financial resources and the knowledge necessary for this transition“, explained the expert.

Racz believes that aid or support programs from the State are not the main factor that can help IT companies make this transition to innovation with a higher added value.

“Of course it is important that government programs, for example those based on European funds, primarily support innovation and digitization activities, but in this case the free market processes themselves will force these companies to rethink their way of operating in order to remain competitive on local and global market“, he concluded.