By Chelsea Babin

Although technical professionals span a wide range of job titles and are needed in a wide range of industries, they earn a healthy salary across the board. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Dice’s annual Salary Survey, it’s also clear that technical professionals have salaries that exceed the national average in every age group.

For 19-year-old professionals, the average income rests at just $18,000 per year, where as the average 20-year-old technical professional earns around $62,000 per year. But, most skilled technical professionals don’t fall into this age range. It’s also important to remember that, both for technical professionals and the average employee, salaries generally rise with age. When looking at the data sets for the average 30-year-old professional, the U.S. Census Bureau found that they made $40,000 per year. For the 30-year-old technical professional, the average was a staggering $92,081. Clearly, technical professionals are earning over twice as much as the national salary average for their age range, and can be earning even more if they have niche technical knowledge, cutting-edge skills like machine learning, or move into lead and management positions.

While salaries for technical professionals are on the upswing, the same can’t always be said for other professionals. Yet many mid-size companies, according to a recent Bloomberg article, are experimenting with an open forum where salaries are posted. This salary transparency initiative was recently implemented at marketing agency Verve and healthcare company CareHealth will follow suit next year. The argument for pay transparency is that it helps to ease tensions for staff who think they’re underpaid or undervalued, while also shining a light on pay disparity. According to a recent Hired study, pay disparity is especially an issue in the IT industry, which found that entry-level women in technology earn 98 cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts. Yet, after 13 years of experience, that pay disparity gets worse as they earn only 92 cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts.

Some companies will see the benefit in pay transparency, particularly when the reporting is done based on earnings and roles solely rather than attaching names to the data. In fact, this practice could help dispel pay myths on self-reported sites like Glassdoor that is incongruous with what is actually paid for that particular position. However, if pay transparency becomes more widespread, companies will need to keep an eye on what their competitors are offering technical professionals with similar skills and experience to their own, lest they fall behind and lose top technical talent who can now easily see they’ll earn more elsewhere.

Overall, salaries are not the main motivator for most technical professionals when leaving a position but, if pay transparency is widely adopted, that could shift. Setting up an appealing company culture, competitive pay structure, and attractive suite of benefits now will help companies safeguard against losing employees left and right, whether pay transparency becomes more widespread or not.