Reading quite a few discussions today (many of them in an obviously Gartner funded thread on Tech Republic about the IT shortage), I began to wonder just when both the Department of Labor and the Justice Department will get involved. Somewhere, the DOL has its own “average base salary” database. I’ve seen links to it before, just didn’t go looking for it today. Instead, I went to Salary.com since it has a fairly good reputation for accurately gathering ranges in regions. (Who knows, they might even be repackaging the DOL information.)

Given today’s prior post, I searched for the title “Programmer Analyst” for the 63113 zipcode. I simply know the contract was somewhere in St. Louis and that was one of the many zipcodes listed for St. Louis. I cannot believe the surrounding zipcodes will have a massive fluctuation. How do I know this? I also looked up base salary ranges for a Chicago zipcode 60673 (again, one of many in the list).

Keep in mind these are base salaries for EMPLOYEES before benefits and bonuses are added in.

60673 somewhere in Chicago

Programmer I 50,397 to 65,151
Programmer II 59,859 to 75,286
Programmer III 73,726 to 91,314
Programmer V 98,300 to 118,161 (8 to 10 years of experience)

63113 somewhere in St. Louis

Programmer I 46,957 to 60,711
Programmer II 55,779 to 70,155
Programmer III 68,701 to 85,090
Programmer V 91,600 to 110,108 (8 to 10 years of experience)
95,504 to 115,744 if bonuses included

The rule with consulting is the rate which must be paid to obtain a qualified consultant is double the range of employee base salary for the same position. This has been the rule for many years. The consultant gets no bennies and there is a pimp taking a cut. So, we do some quick math using the bottom end of the salary range.

91,600 / 2000 = 45.8
115744/2000 = 57.872

If your employee was paid hourly they would make $45.80/hour. Doubling that means the bottom end of a billing rate to consulting firms would be $91.60/hour. Since the client was specifically looking for candidates with 7-10 years of experience, we are working in the correct salary range.

What the client is doing is posting a billing rate to the pimps involved which is less than their internal employee cost. Eventually they will use the lack of respondents as proof there is a shortage of IT workers, so they should be able to bring in H1-B and thus open the door wider for terrorists looking to gain easy access to this country. Those who think such statements are racist obviously don’t know about all of the people Homeland Security is sending home AFTER they’ve gotten here to work in IT. One company in that general vicinity was playing this game and bringing in H1-B workers. A few short weeks into one new-hire’s stint, HR found Homeland Security waiting in their office when they got in to work. The conversation was very short and very simple “He’s leaving today and you are paying for the transportation.” By the time they got done paying for everything they had roughly the cost of two U.S. born workers into this “money saving venture”.

That all brings us to the question of when is Homeland Security going to force the Department of Labor to crack down on this practice by engaging the Justice Department? The obviously have enough data to prove it is a gaping hole in National Security. The couldn’t have already forgotten the arrest of these people could they?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4438593.stm