5 jobs with biggest pay hikes   CNN - April 9, 2013
Wages hit a speed bump in the first quarter, according to PayScale, but pay was still up 3.5% year over year. These 5 professions saw even bigger raises than that.

Information technology

IT workers are in high demand. Almost every company relies on them, whether it's a programmer, software developer or the person you call when your computer goes on the fritz. "We live in a high-tech world," said Katie Bardaro, PayScale's lead economist. "There's been super-high demand for IT workers over the past seven years." The perennial shortage in IT staffers stems from the demands of the job. It requires a specific set of knowledge and skills, according to Bardaro. In fact, unemployment among IT workers is among the lowest in the nation. In February, the industry's jobless rate was 5.2%, about 2.5 percentage points below the national average, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the pay is high. Median income ranges from about $50,000 to more than $100,000 a year. Pay raises for IT workers outpaced all others over the 12 months ended March 31, reported PayScale.

Legal

After many years of meager wage growth, attorneys, paralegals and other legal-service workers are starting to see big gains again. Year-over-year, wages for this group, including bonuses, were up a full 5% through the first three months of 2013. While pay is improving, hiring is still stagnant. Many recent law school graduates have not been able to find jobs in their field, according to Bardaro. Instead, many are working as financial consultants and as administrators at non-profits and other places where they can employ their organizational and legal skills. Over the next few years, prospects for legal workers should improve compared with recent years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It projects a 10% increase in jobs for attorneys, about average for all workers.

Food services

It's tough to get by in the restaurant business: Median pay is less than $25,000 a year for both cooks and waiters -- including tips, according to the BLS. But the recovering economy has helped a lot. "Discretionary spending has come back," said Bardaro. "People are going out to eat and getting take-out more." That has increased demand for restaurant workers, boosting their income by 4.8% year-over-year during 12 months ending March 31, according to PayScale

Marketing & advertising

As the economy improves and consumers feel more confident about spending, advertisers and marketers are seeing increased interest among clients. "Companies start to feel they can reach out to consumers," said Bardaro. Indeed, consumers are spending again. Retail sales were up 4.7% in February compared with 12 months earlier, according to the Census Bureau. Auto sales grew 8.8% and non-store retail sales, including e-commerce, direct and catalogue sales, jumped 15.7%. While that has helped boost pay among advertisers and marketers, it has done little to boost hiring, which slowed in the first quarter, according to PayScale.

Media & publishing

Job prospects for media and publishing professionals are pretty bleak: The BLS forecasts a 6% decline in reporter jobs between 2010 and 2020, for example. Instead of hiring new workers, media firms are piling more work onto current employees, according to Bardaro. "The companies have been asking their current workers to be more productive and they incent them to do that with higher wages," she said.