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In news that should warm any contractor’s heart now the ‘summer’ is over and the days are growing shorter, average rates across the ten most commonly requested IT roles have bounced back after their alarming dip at the end of spring. The average now sits at £30.53, a surge of almost 18% from the average of £25.94 recorded three months ago. It also surpasses the £29.44 at the end of March. This is particularly significant, because the same ten roles were most common in both spring and summer, and the rate rise cannot be attributed to a high-paying role replacing a cheaper one in the top ten. Nine of those roles have seen a rise in rates, with just one unchanged – architect, at £40 per hour. While any upward rate trajectory in troubled times is good news, the nature of the roles that are seeing the biggest rise is particularly promising in these figures, supplied from a sample of more than 100,000 advertised contract roles, by itjobswatch.co.uk. The biggest shift came for project managers, where average rates saw a colossal rise of 57%, from £25.50 to £40.13. Business analysts saw their rates shift up by 15% from £25.35 to £29.25. All of which is great news – PM rates tend to rise when there’s lots of work on, and BA rates normally go up when lots of work is being planned. While it’s possible that some of the bounce-back came from firms panic-cutting contractors earlier in the year and then realising they didn’t have enough people to do the work, the size of these rises can be seen as a general improvement in the health of IT contracting. Elsewhere, developers of all shades saw rates head north. Average Java developer rates rose 22% from £30.00 to £36.57, C# developer roles went up 41% from £25.00 to £35.16, and .NET developers saw their average hourly pay go up 18% from £25.50 to £30.00. The catch all role ‘developer’ has risen too, from £27.50 to £30, an increase of 9%. And figures from others suggest equally positive news. IT recruitment firm CVScreen recently reported a 23% increase in its demand for staff in the third quarter of the year. While not too much can be read into the performance of one agency, the fact that it is receiving fewer applicants for each role (68 per job in September, down from a peak of 109 in May) is significant, and suggests the market is turning in favour of contractors again. CVScreen’s MD, Matthew Iveson, suggests that the good news may, in the short terms at least, create more competition among techies. “We are now seeing confidence returning to the IT jobs market”, he says. “Many IT professionals who had put their career aspirations on hold due to the economic climate are now beginning to test the water.” But, he does see this as the beginning of a steady assent, rather than another jerk in a year of unpredictable fluctuations. “With confidence gradually returning to the industry,” he says, “we fully expect that by early next year the IT Jobs market will be returning to pre credit-crunch levels.” But, where are the roles appearing? Iveson notes that his firm has, “seen demand for OpenSource technologies such as PHP, Linux and MySQL hold up fairly well and it is one area where we have been regularly placing candidates.” Longer term, the rise of Google’s Chrome browser could mean good times for Linux contractors. “Linux professionals with qualifications such as LCP, LCE or RHCE will be much sought after by employers," says Iveson. His claims are borne out by other figures. PHP roles listed on itjobswatch.co.uk have, across the board, risen in popularity – although some roles (‘PHP4’, ‘PHP web developer’, for example) are still only measured in tens of contract jobs available. And while rates have generally dipped, the fall has not been as catastrophic as elsewhere. The jobs with the catch-all term PHP, for example, have actually seen their average rate go up, from £22.50 to £23.50 over the last 12 months, and now account for just under 900 of the 100,000+ job adverts in the sample. But, in what has been a tumultuous year so far, it would be dangerous to read too much into one decent quarter. One slightly worrying survey from IT firm Axis recently claimed that 63% new IT projects were actually being commissioned because they would cut costs. Winter’s figures will tell if this has been a surge back to normality, or another false dawn. Matt Farquharson Data sources: Oct 7, 2009 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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