How much do IT consultants actually earn? If you consider working as an IT consultant, you are probably curious to first figure out how much IT consultants actually charge for their services and how much you would potentially be able to make as an IT consultant.
The short answer is that an IT consultant in the US has an average salary around $75,000, but to get the full picture, we need to get an understanding of what you would actually do as an IT consultant, since your specialisation, seniority level, location and several other parameters will impact your specific answer to the question of how much an IT consultant makes.
To understand your salary, you first need to understand your responsibilities and tasks as an IT consultant. Will you work as an external IT advisor or work as an onsite IT contractor? Are you a developer, an IT architect or maybe an IT project manager? Some IT consultants specialize in small businesses or non-profit organisations while others focus on large corporations, cost reductions and optimizing procedures. The IT consultants at the top of their field can make as much as $132.000 a year in the US according to Payscale.com, including bonuses, commission and profit shares.
What does it take to make it as an IT consultant?
Although IT consultant is not a protected title in the US, most IT consultants have at least a bachelor’s degree in either computer science, engineering, software development or a related field of study, according to Western Governors University. A career in IT consulting can be a great career path as it allows for more flexibility than the general corporate environment. This flexibility may also contribute to the highly satisfactory in the job. On Payscale, 1217 people have checked the ‘extremely satisfied’ box for job satisfaction.
Supply and demand in the industry is deciding how much an IT consultant makes
As with almost any other product or service, the salary for an IT consultant essentially comes down to supply and demand. If the task requires high skills in a certain area that is in high demand and maybe at the core of companies’ business services, salaries will, generally speaking, be higher. But looking at the salary for an IT consultant at the American job market in 2018, the average salary is around $75.000. A young IT consultant at entry level can expect a salary around $64.000 a year, while the average salary for a mid-career IT consultant, in the same market, with between 5 or 10 years of experience goes to $83.000, an increase of almost 30%. These numbers, however, are based on people who identify as IT consultants and can therefore both be freelance and employed individuals, but it gives a reasonable representation of the market.
A bright future and solid earnings for IT consultants
The future looks bright for the consultant business in general and according to the Bureau of labor statistics, the growth of employed management analysts, here under IT consultants, will increase by 14% from 2016 to 2026. This is double the rate of the employment market as a whole. The Bureau of labor statistics does not collect data explicitly on IT consultants but does have specific expectations for the field.
The growth is expected to be particularly strong in fields such as IT and human resource as organisations are seeking to lower their costs and increase their efficiency.
Also, there are several career paths when starting as an IT consultant, check out the graph below to see the opportunities.
