The ACS said a survey conducted by the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia (APESMA) revealed average salaries for ICT employees rose by an average of 3.8 percent for the period - slightly above the increase in the consumer price index (CPI) but just below the rise in Australian average weekly earnings.
The ACS also said the survey found unemployment in the sector stood at 7.2 percent, above the Australian Bureau of Statistics' national unemployment figure of 5.1 percent.
Rates for independent contractors varied considerably but generally sat between AU$50 to AU$100 per hour, Mandla said. About 44 percent of respondents had boosted their rates during the year, up from 29 percent in the previous survey, while 42 percent had held their rates steady and 13 percent had seen them fall.
ACS president Edward Mandla said in a statement while the modest pay rise provided some positive signs for the sector, the outlook remained uncertain.
"The ... forecasts for the industry remain clouded by issues such as high unemployment, offshoring and an uneven supply of skills in key employment areas," Mandla said.
"As offshoring continues to bite, any gains in employment continue to be eroded".
He said the ICT industry was shifting away from programming and towards supporting the competitive drivers of an organisation - but Universities and migration programs were still producing programmers "in bulk".
"Today employers want graduates ready to go with hard skills such as security, Web services, wide-area networking, voice over IP, wireless, customer relationship management, workflow and document management, enterprise application integration and enterprise resource planning," Mandla said.
"There is also a huge move to soft skills like project management, people management, negotiation and business case development".
Mandla said the ACS was participating in a survey which would identify how much employee training was required, what was currently available and who was expected to pay.
