Technology workers in Seattle can be forgiven if they didn't notice the economic downturn of 2008-2009.
That's because mean salaries for IT professionals in that Northwest metropolis rose across the board last year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While the gains were not quite as robust as those in Silicon Valley, they are nevertheless impressive, given that they came at a time of recession and rising unemployment.
The Seattle area includes workers at the headquarters of both Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., as well as a growing number of tech startups.
Computer programmers in the Seattle metropolitan area enjoyed the largest boost among IT workers, with mean annual salaries rising 5.3% from the prior year to $94,120.
Salaries for database administrators also showed healthy gains, rising 4.4% to $82,300. Likewise for network and systems data analysts, who saw their pay rise 3.5% to $87,820.
Engineers who developed software applications had mean salaries of $95,170, up 1.8%
Meanwhile, systems software engineers remained the highest paid IT workers (outside of university researchers), with mean salaries rising 1.3% to $101,000.
Network administrators in the Seattle area saw stronger gains than their Silicon Valley counterparts, with a rise of 2.0% to $79,860.
Pay for systems analysts rose 1.5% to $86,590.
Overall employment in the occupation category of computer and mathematical sciences rose 5.8% to total 89,710 workers, the BLS data showed.
Write to John Shinal
