2/19/2003 -- According to research firm Foote Partners, the average "premium" pay (a.k.a. bonus and other non-base compenstation) for skills possessed by many IT professionals dropped 13.2 percent in 2002, according to the company's "Q42002 Quarterly & 2002 Annual Trends in Tech Skills and Certification Pay" report, released last month.

New Caanan, Conn.-based Foote Partners specializes in tracking IT salaries and their relationships to specific job skills and/or certifications. Because many certifications and skills are rewarded by employers through bonus pay or other "premiums," it tracks certifications and skills in relation to such premium pay.

Certification-related premium pay is down 3.3 percent overall for 2002, although it's up .4 percent on average over the past two years, the report says.

Some certifications were hit particularly hard in 2002, however. For example, premium pay for Microsoft's MCP certification dropped 40 percent from one year ago, the report states. Other certifications to see a major decline in the past 12 months for premium compensation include CompTIA's i-Net+ (-30 percent), Siebel's Certified Consultant (-29 percent) and Prosoft CIW Master Administrator and Enterprise Developer (-27 percent). Microsoft's MCSE certification held steady during 2002 and is up 17 percent over the past two years, a spokesperson for Foote Partners stated.

Titles seeing a rise in premium pay value in 2002 include Microsoft's MCSD (+10 percent), Novell's CNE (+13 percent), Red Hat's RHCE (+14 percent), LPI's LPIC (+17 percent). Two security titles -- SAN's GIAC and ISC(2)'s CISSP --topped the list, each rising in value more than 30 percent last year.

General areas that did well include databases, project management and security certifications. The certifications most likely to earn the largest bonuses as a percentage of base salary (when granted) are Project Management Professional, Microsoft's MCT, SAN's GIAC and Oracle's OCP DBA.

For technical skills, some of the hardest-hit skills in 2002 were Cold Fusion (-40 percent), Novell GroupWise (-38 percent), HTML/DHTML (-33 percent), Windows 2000 (-27 percent) and JavaScript (-27 percent). Other skills to see decreases in premium pay rewards were Linux (-11 percent) and Ethernet switching (-11 percent).

Some of the handful of skills seeing growth for premium pay were: WML (+10 percent), VoIP (+11 percent) and Microsoft Access (+14 percent). The group of skills that consistently earned the highest amount of premium pay was RAD/extreme programming, with 16 percent, the report said.

Foote Partners tracks pay for more than 140 certifications and skills in 122 North American and European Cities, monitoring the pay of more than 30,000 IT professionals. To find out more about the company's research or to purchase a copy of the full report, visit http://www.footepartners.com. -B.N.