These wages reflect the relative scarcity of skilled high-tech workers, and the importance of the knowledge and energy these workers bring to their companies and the economy. For somebody seeking a career, software is a great field with an extraordinarily bright future. Creating software is a lot of fun, if you have the temperament for it. It is rewarding to create a product that helps change the world. This is about three times the rate of the overall US economy.
Custom software remains the largest part of the market, but the future belongs to packaged software.
The US leads in software by almost any measure, but many nations are destined to play important roles and share the economic benefits of software jobs. Software can be created anywhere, so the opportunity is truly global. It's not a win-lose industry, either. More software development in one region does not mean reduced software development in another. Rather, software development as a whole helps to grow the world economy.