IT salaries and hiring will continue to rise but at slower growth rates, according to TEKsystems’ annual survey of IT leaders released Dec. 8. Additionally, the percentage of IT leaders who expect budget increases is at its lowest level since TEKsystems’ first annual IT forecast survey for 2013.

The survey found 37% expect their organization’s IT budget to increase, down from 45% in the 2015 forecast; 51% of IT leaders expect budgets to stay the same, up from 39% last year. Those expecting a decrease fell to 12% from 16% last year.

“With so much technology spend coming from areas outside of the IT department, it’s clear that IT leaders are taking into account the evolving nature of their responsibilities as they look to 2016,” TEKsystems Research Manager Jason Hayman said. “Organizational alignment will be their number one challenge, and essential for ensuring that the IT department is able to effectively support technology initiatives across LOBs and other functional areas, like marketing. Despite lower expectations for budget and salary increases, anticipated growth of full-time and contingent headcounts points to a healthy core IT team. However, IT leaders should be mindful that failure to properly adjust salaries in a competitive IT labor market will make it difficult to attract and retain the talent they need.”

According to the survey, contingent IT staff comprise 23% of IT personnel this year, but that is expected to edge down to 20% in 2016.

Next year, 41% of IT leaders expect to increase contingent IT staff, according to the survey, up from 36% who planned to increase staff in the 2015 survey. However, only 8% plan to decrease contingent IT staff next year compared to 10% going into 2015.

For full-time staff, 43% expect hiring to increase next year, up from 40% in last year’s survey.

Programmers and developers, security and software engineers were the most difficult IT roles to fill. However, 53% of IT leaders expect salary increases for programmers and developers — down from 54% who expected salary increases last year and 65% in 2014.TEKsystems polled more than 500 IT leaders (CIOs, IT vice presidents, IT directors, IT hiring managers) in October regarding their expectations for IT spending, skills needs and organizational challenges in 2016. TEKsystems, part of the Allegis Group, is the largest IT staffing firm in the US.