Most of us are curious about what other people's salary is at their jobs, keen to compare and judge. Unfortunately such curiosity often goes to the heart of a person's self worth. Our lives are much more than our job.

However, in a job situation salary plus benefits and perks is the standard for judging economic worth. Salary knowledge is also good information when bargaining for the next position or job, or in deciding whether to move on to better pastures because you think your employer doesn't value you enough.

The Bermuda Employers Council does an annual salary survey among their members but won't make the results public. I've tried to get it from them and the request was politely turned down. I'm now hoping some liberal-minded employer will sneak it to me anonymously.

It's not in an employer's interest to share such information as it gives more power to the workers to demand the salary that is standard for their field. As the situation stands right now employers can use the knowledge to judge what they'll give employees.

They are of course counting on employees' reluctance to share what they're getting paid with others in the same field and at the workplace. Everyone keeps such valuable information to themselves for fear it will spark jealously, contempt or other emotions among their fellow workers, and unfortunately they're probably right.

Making your own salary public is a losing proposition. It's a situation of "If you don't show me yours I won't show you mine.'' If the information was freely available, at least as an average figure, we would have a powerful tool. The information can also help students pick the kind of career they want to pursue.

There is one place on the Internet I've found that contains a crude but useful gauge of salaries in the US. Working Woman magazine publishes an annual survey of salaries broken down by industry category, and then by position, and then by gender. Go to www.workingwomanmag.com and click on the annual salary survey link for 1998.

As I've said the survey is crude. And then you have to extrapolate for Bermuda. As far as I can judge you have to add anywhere from $15,000 to $25,000 to get a rough guide as to what the going rate is for your job here.

The information is skewed because of Bermuda's size, economic focus, cost of living and the need to attract expatriates from overseas when the expertise is not available locally.

As there is a huge demand for those working with computers, salaries in the sector are relatively high compared to other jobs. I won't go through the gender differences in salary other than to comment that there was a wide difference of almost $8,000 in some cases.

You also have to estimate that companies will pay a high premium on top of the average for top talent. You must remember the salaries of those in the information technology sector have been appreciating by more than the average every year for the past five years.

Even with the adjustments the figures give you a relative gauge of the salary differences above and below your current position and from sector to sector.

Working Woman found the average salary for a chief information officer at a large company in the US was $103,800. An applications development manager received $77,000, a chief information officer at a small company $73,000, a technical services manager $71,200, a project manager $66,200, a senior software engineer $60,200, a senior programmer/analyst $54,900, and a mainframe senior programmer/analyst $52,800. A business system analyst made anywhere from $44,800 to $65,000 depending on whether the position was in the low salary location of Pittsburgh or in New York City, where companies paid the highest salaries.

Check out the site for other job categories in the computer sector and 36 other industries. The survey will be updated in March this year, so you can visit the Working Woman site about then.

A new study by Pew Research Centre shows the use of the Internet is spreading to the wider population. New users in the US are more likely to have less income, and not to have gone to college.

About 23 percent of adults surveyed who started using the Internet in 1998 had household incomes below $30,000 a year, compared to 16 percent of experienced online users whose incomes are at the same level. About 40 percent never attended college, almost twice the percentage of long-time Internet users. In the area of security, 61 percent of those using the Internet and who have never bought online say they are worried about using credit cards.

Contact Ahmed at 295-5881 ext. 248 or 238-3854, or techtattle y gazette.newsmedia.bm if you have any comments or information.