Web developers have been given a bad name for their work in recent years and the average salary for those jobs has been steadily rising.
But new research from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) shows that in some cases the rise in the salary can be due to the rise of new skills and a change in the nature of the job.
PwC’s new report, Web Developers: The Top 10, is based on salary figures for people who are web developers and shows that the average annual salary for a web developer is £34,000.
But for the same job the average person with a similar skill set earns £46,000, a rise of £2,500 over a year.
The rise in pay is the result of two main factors: increased numbers of web developers in the UK and a rise in skills.
The number of people with web development experience rose from 1.7 million in 2014 to 2.4 million in 2020, while the number of developers with a high-level web developer role rose from 17,000 to 23,000 over the same period.
The growth in web developers was particularly dramatic in London, where the number rose from 2.2 million in 2012 to 3.3 million in 2018.
“The rise in web developer salaries has been driven by a combination of changes in the job and skills, both of which are driven by the growth of the web and mobile industries,” said Simon Wren, senior vice president for global workforce, at Pricewaterhead.
More people are increasingly choosing to be part of a large team rather than being the sole responsibility of a single developer.” “
And more of the work has become automated.
More people are increasingly choosing to be part of a large team rather than being the sole responsibility of a single developer.”
In 2020, nearly all web developers were self-employed and the growth in this group has been substantial.
The biggest increase in self-employment was in the City, with the number jumping from 7,600 to 14,600 people, which grew from the 8,600 in 2014.
Other regions with more self-employees included Bristol (10,800), Leeds (11,200), Leeds and Newcastle (10 and 9,000 respectively), and London (9,600).
Pwc’s new survey also showed that more people were getting a paid leave of absence, up from 12% in 2018 to 15% in 2020.
There is also a rise across the UK in the proportion of people taking unpaid leave, from 12.3% in 2019 to 14.9% in 2021.
But PwP said it was important to remember that pay in the workforce had been increasing faster than salaries in many industries, and in some sectors it was increasing faster and more rapidly than salaries.
“Self-employment is a relatively new and rapidly evolving way of doing business, and the rise and fall in the size of the workforce is a consequence of these trends,” said Wren.
“In many sectors, the changes have been slower to catch up than in other industries, but these trends are likely to continue for a number of years.”
What is web development?
Web development is the art of making websites and apps, and its different from web design, web development and web development consulting.
In the UK, web developers are usually people who have a background in web development or a related field such as data modelling or web development.
A web developer has a broad set of skills, such as developing web applications, managing the development of sites and websites and creating and managing user experiences for web applications.
“Web development can range from basic programming skills such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, CSS preprocessors, images and images processing to the more complex, such in creating the user experience for a website,” said PwB’s Wren in a statement.
“It includes designing web pages, developing the visual design of the pages and managing the interaction between users and applications.
It is not just about programming, it can also include interaction design and interaction testing.”
What are the jobs web developers do?
There are a number different types of web development roles.
Some involve coding on a computer and some involve writing code on a website.
“There are two main types of work web developers undertake: coding and writing,” said Ms Wren of the rise for web developers.
“Both of these can be performed by the same person, but the coding is usually done on a remote site.”
The number one job for web developer in 2020 was web development consultant.
This was followed by development specialist, web developer, web site designer and web developer with a design or development role.
“More people are working with web applications now, which means they are developing more applications,” said Mr Wren from PwS.
“Some people are developing mobile apps as well as web applications.”
There are also a range of different types in the roles of web developer support, web architect, web designer, developer