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Along with longer evenings and the promise that winter is truly, finally over, May traditionally brings a lift in interest in contractors as the effect of April’s fresh budgets and a new financial year begin to take effect. And this year is no different, though the figures would suggest that any contractor optimism be tempered with caution. From the details of the more than 80,000 advertised contracting jobs analysed by Contractor UK, the average rate for the ten most commonly requested skills has edged up by just 1%, from £26.81 to £27.01. This headline figure is a good indicator of the general health of the market and prospects for the coming months. Programme directors are often keen to ensure that work is well under way before people begin to disappear through July and August, and the upward nudging of rates is in line with this. In our last bi-monthly market report, a significant leap in rates for telecoms contractors was noted, with those in the mobile comms arena faring best. While this particular market can fluctuate more dramatically than most, some encouragement should be taken from the news that these rates continue to bounce merrily upwards, though there is mixed news. The hourly average offered for contractors with 3G skills has climbed 15% (following the 9% jump from January to March) to £34.98 from £30.40. GSM rates however, have fallen away dramatically after an impressive rise of 11% between January and March. The current rate of £32.69 marks a 16% tumble over the last two months. The appearance of GSM in advertisements has in contrast, fractionally increased. Another change worth noting is the apparent movement away from London. The capital has seen a dramatic fall in the number of advertised roles over the last two months. Since the inception of this column in November last year, the capital has resolutely laid claim to around one third of all advertised contract vacancies. But, since March this has fallen from 31% to 22%. There does not appear to be one obvious regional winner taking up the slack, although Yorkshire makes the top ten of requested locations for the first time. A more prominent trend has been a slight increase across all areas outside the capital. But the best news appears to come for those that work with UNIX. The last two months have seen a significant jump in rates across the major flavours of the operating system. Linux rates have moved from £27.10 to £30.50, a shift of 11% that is mirrored by HPUX (moving up by 6% from £33.6 to £35.29) and AIX (which rose 7% from £31.70 to £34.04.) But even this may not tell the whole story. Andy Heyes is Manager Technical Recruitment for Harvey Nash IT. He suggests that such figures are, “a bit on the light side. Our experience is of people coming in at the higher end. Our typical placements, like some recently in the investment banking sector, ranged from £40 to £45. But a typical rate would be more in the region of £35 to £40. “Linux has seen the big increase and the reason for that is that it’s free. We’ve seen a big increase in the demand for Linux on non critical business systems – it wouldn’t say, be used for a trading desk – and we’re seeing that make gains at the expense of the other two. Red Hat is also increasing in demand.” In the programming arena, C# continues to see demand rise, appearing in 4.05% of advertised vacancies from 3.85% in March. This has seen a corresponding movement on rates, shifting from a flat £33 to £33.92. The other major languages, Java, C++, SQL and VB have all suffered a slight drop in demand, but with differing effects on rate. Java and C++ rates have dropped noticeably, while SQL and VB have risen from £28.60 to £29.55 and £28.10 to £28.78 respectively. Matt Farquharson May 25, 2005 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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