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| CURRENT SECTION :: Market Reports | UK's most visited IT Contractor Site - 250k unique visitors March 2008 |
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Traditionally, March is a month of mixed tidings for contractors. Firms that allocate budgets by the calendar year are still spending merrily and can prove a good source of revenue. However, the many others that set their funding by the financial year often find themselves reining in their spending as they eek out the last of their budgets. This mixed impact has had an effect on the figures in this month’s market report, which though generally encouraging, does show stagnation in some areas. The average hourly rate for the 10 most commonly requested skills has fallen by £2 since January, from £27.56 to £25.48. However, this should not cause concern and is more to do with the type of roles required than a significant downturn. While most roles in the top ten suffered a fractional dip in rate, perhaps due to those tax year budgets, it is the replacement of SQL with project management that has had the biggest impact. Average PM rates are lower than those for SQL contractors, affecting the average for the whole top ten. The effects of January’s spending surge are still being felt, as the demand for developers continues to increase. The most commonly requested role has moved up half a point, now appearing in more than 19% of advertisements, up from 18.57. Conversely, rates have fallen slightly, but remain above £30 per hour. The biggest winners in terms of rate jumps are ABAP and Shell Script. While both languages only noticed a small increase in demand, some generous payers pushed rates from £69.20 to £77.30 for the former and from £32 to £36.50 for the latter. The rise of C# continues, as predicted in the crystal ball gazing of this column at the end of last year. It is now the fourth most commonly requested programming language, behind SQL, Java and C++, rising half a percentage point, to appear in 3.85% of advertised roles. While those three more common languages suffered slight dips in rate, the demand for C# has caused average rates to move from £32.30 to £33. In line with recent Atsco reports that show a dramatic increase in the demand for web developers, the clamour for web related application development skills continues to grow. Demand for .NET, XML, HTML and ASP.NET has seen all of these climb the overall rankings of in-demand skills. .NET now appears in 5.81% of all advertisements, making it the 16th most commonly requested skill of all, and more common even than generic terms such as technical support and system support. Rates for .NET roles have now reached an average of £29 per hour. The public sector provides another growth area. Central government roles account for 4.46% of advertised vacancies. This is perhaps as a result of the ongoing and well publicised problems that saw the computers of 80,000 civil servants crash during a "routine software upgrade" at the end of last year. Some of the biggest leaps in rate have come in the telecoms arena, with contractors with mobile telecoms skills particularly benefiting. Increased demand for GSM and 3G has seen rates for each of these shoot up. Average rates for a GSM role have risen 11%, from £35 to £38.80, and for 3G have jumped 9%, from £27.80 to £30.40. The volatility of this particular market should encourage contractors to take advantage while they can. Marno Herincks, the senior telecoms consultant at SSR, warns that, “there’s a lot of smoke without fire in this market. People can find that they are working for a month, then a project gets canned and rates go back down. Firms are constantly bidding for these projects, but often the money never actually gets released. For contractors, it means that one minute they are at a premium and the next they can see rates come down by £50 or more a day. It’s not ever increasing, it’s a fluctuating market.” Time then, for those in telecoms to make hay. Matt Farquharson Mar 23, 2005 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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