Is tech the best business to be in?

Recently, with the economic down-turn most people would have probably said no. CEO salaries in Silicon Valley had a large 6% dip in 2008 and a further 5% in 2009. Recent figures have however shown that in 2010 average CEO salaries rose by up to 37% which is more than in any other industry sector and by quite a way.

Despite the fact that Oracle’s Larry Ellison took a 17% pay cut to keep his job he still tops the list with a staggering $70 million earned in 2010. That’s over $190k per day, every day!

Most others like Cisco boss John Chambers and Intel’s Paul Otellini had to do with just a mere $15-20 million – a hard life right?! Whereas the average annual salary for all workers in the San Jose area was $67,850 in 2010 which is up a mere 1.6% from 2009.

In contrast more and more CEO’s are not taking a salary or at least taking only $1. Steve Jobs of Apple has been taking only $1 in salary for several years even though Apple reported $14 billion in annual profit. However, it is estimated Jobs has a personal fortune estimated at $8.3 billion – bet that $1 makes a difference!

It seems that while lots of companies are struggling the tech industry was the first to bounce back and show huge record growth, but that was probably not hard compared to the 2 years before. It must be noted that there were thousands of people who lost their jobs in 2008 and 2009 who were not quite so lucky and of course the lower salaried workers always take the brunt of the cuts.