Do IT certifications actually pay off? What the data says

Every certification vendor's marketing page says a credential will change your career. That claim is easy to make and hard to check. So instead of taking anyone's word for it, including ours, here is what the actual survey and government wage data say.

What certified professionals report

Pearson VUE, which administers exams for CompTIA, Microsoft, ISC2, and most other major IT vendors, publishes an annual Value of IT Certification report built from survey responses. The 2025 Candidate Report surveyed nearly 24,000 IT professionals worldwide about what happened after they earned a certification.

• 32% said they received a salary increase after certifying, and of those, 31% reported a raise above 20%.
• 56% saw that increase within three months of certifying, and 83% within six months.
• 82% said certifying gave them more confidence to pursue new job opportunities.
• 63% said they received a promotion, or expected to receive one, as a result.

Pearson VUE's companion research, the 2026 Value of IT Certification Employer Report, looks at the same question from the other side of the hiring table: employers estimate an average of nearly $18,000 in additional annual value for every certified employee on their team.

What government wage data shows

Certification-specific salary surveys are useful but self-selected: people who bother answering a certification survey already believe certifications matter. So it is worth checking against a source with no stake in the answer at all: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook reports the median annual wage across computer and information technology occupations at $105,990 as of May 2024, more than double the $49,500 median across all U.S. occupations. That is not a certification-specific number since the BLS tracks occupations, not credentials, but it establishes the baseline the certification-specific numbers sit on top of: IT work already pays well above the median, and certifications are one of the more direct, affordable ways to move into it.

The honest version

A certification is a credible, checkable signal that you know a defined body of material, nothing more and nothing less. It does not replace hands-on experience, and no reputable source, including the ones cited here, claims it guarantees a raise, a promotion, or a job. What the data actually supports is narrower and still meaningful: certified IT professionals report better outcomes than uncertified peers at a rate too consistent, across too many independent surveys and years, to dismiss as noise.

That is the case for treating a certification as one input into a career plan, not the whole plan. Pair it with real practice, and, where the role calls for it, a portfolio of actual work, which is the gap our Job Ready courses exist to close.