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| CURRENT SECTION :: Market Reports | UK's most visited IT Contractor Site - 250k unique visitors March 2008 |
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The booze-fuelled Christmas season normally sees a drop-off in productivity, and as programme directors look ahead to roasting by an open fire, the decision-making process in many organisations can become frustratingly slow. As the year draws to an end, the most urgent jobs get prioritized in a panic and the rest get overlooked. If your contracting skills sit in an area in that first category, this flurry of activity is good news. If not, and you’re out of contract, it’ll be lonely this Christmas. After successive rate rises for the last quarter, contractors are seeing their cheques shrink for the first time since May. This seasonal dip has come a month earlier than last year, when early December saw a drop in rates. The average hourly rate across the ten most commonly selected contracting job titles is £34.18, down a measly 69p on last month’s £34.87, but a drop (of 2%) none the less. The biggest losers continue to be SAP Consultants, who have seen average rates fall from more than £60 in July, to £52.43 today: this represents a 16% drop from 2005. But, there is an interesting contrast here across the different modules. SAP BW continues to be highly in demand, and is quoted in 18% (or 3,300) of the 18,400 SAP contract jobs analysed. Here, day rates have jumped more than 17%, from £389 to £458 in a year, indicating that senior BW staff are enjoying a glorious 2006. However, average hourly rates have crashed by a quarter over the same period, going from £54 to £40.83., which implies a tough time for those just below this senior bracket. The world of application development is an equally interesting market with some perplexing trends. .NET developers have seen their stock rise steadily over the last two and a half years. Back in April 2004, it was requested in less than 1% of the 100,000 jobs analysed. Now it appears in almost 4% of job ads, on a sample size of just over 100,000. But, rates are falling. The peak over those two and a half years came in October 2005, when hourly rates were £31 and daily rates were £432. These are now at £29.09 and £394, falls of 4.92% and 8.71% respectively. .NET’s most common companion in contract development job ads is C#. This particular skill is a model of consistency however, with day rates staying resiliently around the £475 mark for the last few years. Today they are slightly down at £463. This is a dip of less than 1% from last year’s £467, with hourly rates going the other way, from £32 to £32.45 over the same period. While such solidity is comforting, the failure of C# to move with inflation is not. A C# developer whose rate has been fixed at £475 for two years will find that, proportionately, their income has significantly dropped. This is not quite the case in other areas. Contractors with the more generic “developer” title have seen minimum day rates rise by £35, from £390 to £415 over the same two year period. While October’s dip in general rates is slightly worrying, contractors should perhaps be more interested in these longer-term trends. C# is still much in demand, but as more contractors become capable, rates remain static, or edge gently downwards in contrast to other more generic development roles. As always, the contractors art remains staying ahead of trends, rather than simple learning the most in-demand skill. Matt Farquharson Data source: www.itjobswatch.co.uk Nov 1, 2006 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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