In a wired, online world, the people who keep the wires online are still valued as employees.

In a salary survey of 12,410 information technology professionals conducted by InformationWeek, IT professionals do pretty well, with actual raises for both IT staff and IT managers overall across the nation, even if the average increase from last year was small, 0.7% for staff and 1.6% for managers.

"All in all, this is better news for IT professionals than we were expecting," said Art Wittmann, Managing Director of InformationWeek Analytics, who helped conduct the survey.

More IT professionals felt their jobs were secure than not, although the rate of insecurity has risen from last year.

The survey found that strong tech skills are still earning good money, even in the current shaky economy. The best-paying functions - all with median compensation of more than $90,000 - include data mining, data integration, security, ERP and web infrastructure.

The only non-management job with median pay above $100,000 this year was IT architect.

The survey found that two-thirds of the IT professionals described themselves as satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs. The rate who said they were dissatisfied was just 11%.