BENGALURU: Indian IT industry may have reached extreme heights in the course of this one decade, but the salaries for the IT professionals at entry level is still the same, reports ET. Within these years, many jobs have been created in India. Even the inflation rate has jumped 40-50 percent, but it has been reported that top IT companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro are among the low paying companies at entry levels.

In 2007-2008, the amount offered to engineers at the entry level was a package of 2.75 lakh per annum, which amounts to a gross salary of 23, 000 per month. Now that amount, after so many years is around 3 Lakh to 3.5 Lakh per annum, which is not a huge change. HR head of one of India’s top 5 IT firms said, “We really don't see the need to raise entry-level salaries—it will stay stagnant for now. Given the glut of engineers at the fresher level, we can afford to keep salaries at the same level for the foreseeable future.”

An Infosys employee who joined the company in 2007-08 said, “Salaries have remained more or less constant at the fresher levels since the time we joined the industry about seven years ago. Exceptional people who perform well may get better hikes in a couple of years, but mostly in my experience, I have seen only a marginal difference in salaries for new graduates from the time we joined to now. Of course, the companies invest in training us for their requirements and projects, but the cost of living has definitely gone up since the time I joined, more so for people living in metro cities. With the constantly changing technology demands, we have to keep upgrading our skills and hope we get the right opportunities to merit a substantial raise.”

The reason behind this stagnancy of entry-level salary for engineers is the high number of engineers passing out every year. As per the Kotak Institutional Equities in India almost 1.5 million engineers graduate every year while only 1.5 to 2 lakh jobs are available in the IT industry. Those candidates, who are not selected, wait for next recruitment process, while earning some degree or qualification. The recruiters also prefer the old batch as compared to the fresh one and thus there is no need for them to raise the entry level salary.

S Ganapathy of SRM University said, “The students have aspirations but where is the job market? There are 10 lakh engineering graduates passing out every year and only two-three lakh jobs are available. They hardly have a choice but to opt for these companies that pay such salaries.”

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