IT workers are due to receive a median 1.8 percent bump in salary in 2010—below the 2.7 percent rate of inflation and the lowest rate in the last five years—according to data from a 2010 salary report from Computer Economics. A similar report from technology job board Dice, in January, showed that in 2009 tech salaries rose a measly 1 percent.

"By historical standards, the 1.8 percent median pay raise is meager," CE wrote on its Website. "But in light of still-high unemployment rates, the finding indicates IT executives are responding to the need to retain their best workers and boost damaged morale."

By comparison, salary raises for tech workers in 2007 were 3.8 percent, CE data showed. The effects of the recession on technology salaries will continue to be felt for some time.

"With persistent unemployment, organizations will be able to hire new workers at rates lower than those who were laid off during the recession. This should place downward pressure on U.S. national median salary levels over the coming months," CE said.

In Silicon Valley, wages for high technology workers have been on a downward trend for eight years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the week of Feb. 1, though the BLS expects real job and wage growth in biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical technology fields.

Who will be receiving the greatest salary increases of all technology areas in 2010? Developers and operations personnel are faring the best, according to CE. IT managers and executives, however, will have to get in line to see any significant bump upward in pay. Developers should receive 2.1 percent increases; operations workers are expected to receive 2 percent boosts.

"The developers group includes application programmers, data analysts, database administrators, business analysts, architects and others involved in the development of new systems as well as the maintenance of existing systems," CE wrote. "Following close behind is the operations group, at 2.0 percent. The data center operations group includes computer operators, production control analysts, technical support representatives and help desk representatives. We also include technical writers, trainers and librarians in this group."

Below operations, but ahead of managers and executives, are network and systems support workers, who are due to see 1.9 percent raises in 2010, according to CE, which defined the group as including "network administrators, system administrators, storage administrators, security analysts, telecom analysts and Webmasters, among others."

Application developers and SOA (service-oriented architecture) specialists, according to the January Dice report, are getting the most pay. Dice said:

"Continuing to lead the pack in top paid skills is ABAP—Advanced Business Application Programming ($115,916), followed by SOA—Service Oriented Architecture ($107,827), and ETL—Extract Transform and Load ($105,844). ...

"Applications server skills JBoss and Weblogic joined the $100,000 salary ranks with annual salaries topping $101,869 and $100,313, respectively. Individuals with Solaris ($96,672) and AIX ($95,464) skills were the highest paid [of those with] operating system skills.

"The [areas with the] highest paid titles include IT Management ($114,874), Information Architecture ($105,247), Project Manager ($103,437), Software Engineer ($91,342), and Database Administrator ($91,283)."