"While IT executives are under pressure to restrain spending growth, they are still facing a tight labor market and competition for talent to support investments made in infrastructure and business applications over the past two years." said John Longwell, research director of the Irvine-based IT advisory firm, which has been publishing IT metrics since 1979.

The networking-related positions will receive the largest pay raises. The median national pay raise for networking personnel, a group that includes security analysts, network administrators, webmasters, and others, will be about 3.9%. The expansion of network management staff's responsibilities to include security, compliance, and telecommunications is helping drive demand for these skills.

The developers group, which includes applications programmers, database administrators, technical architects, and others, also remains near the top of the list when it comes to salary increases. This group should receive a median 3.7% increase.

IT operations staff and IT executives and managers will see salaries rise by a median 3.5%.