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A recently released study reveals that there has been a 0.5% decrease in the amount of money IT experts are being paid for services in the first quarter of 2009.

The study was conducted by Foote Partners, a research firm that actively monitors IT skills payment.

The main casualties are C++, AIX, dBase and AIX, which saw a 25% drop in pay when compared to Q1 2008. This isn’t as bad as PowerBuilder however, who’s coders’ pay declined by 50% when compared to a year before in the uncertified skills category.

Not all is looking down however – 46 skills actually rose in value in Q1 2009. Linux skills grew a whopping 28.6% in the uncertified skills category. As did Apache Web server skills and Java skills, whom also saw significant gains to 25% and 20% respectively.

The certified skills pay tell a similar story, with both major gains and losses. Pay for HP/Certified Systems Engineers grew by a solid 14.3%, with Sun Certified Java programmers and HP/Accredited Integration Specialists got a comfortable bump of 13.5% and 12.5% respectively.

On the other end of the spectrum, Prosoft Master CIW Administration payment fell by 25% – which is rather significant.

The full report is available here.