India ahead of Europe in techies' salary hike

Engineers' salaries in India and China have risen at a pace faster than that in some of their European counterparts like Japan and North America.


MNCs outsourcing work to India with a wish to do away with the increasing labor cost concerns may now rethink their strategies as labor costs in India are on a fast rise.

Engineers' salaries in India and China have risen at a pace faster than that in some of their European counterparts like Japan and North America, says the 2009 EE Times Global Salary & Opinion Survey.

Almost half of the respondents in China and about 40 per cent of those in India were seeing their salaries much or slightly higher than what they were 5 years ago, while only 34 per cent of respondents in Europe and 25 per cent of that in North America reported a hike in the similar duration.



The study says that competition for engineering talent in China and India has stiffened over the past decade as hardware and software companies have accelerated the transfer of manufacturing and design operations from Western locations to lower-cost parts of the globe.

Due to this tight competition, companies often offer attractive incentives to secure experienced engineers, only to lose them to rivals after a couple of years.

Although high-tech employers in China and India have indeed been raising compensation for local employees, many engineers in the two countries still earn considerably less than their counterparts elsewhere, the study adds.