IT jobs market for contractors up 5%

Britain’s labour market for contract IT staff actually expanded in the third quarter, a jobs site has shown, at odds with an agency body’s index for the period but in line with end-user optimism seen in the past few weeks. 

Releasing quarterly data for IT roles, jobadswatch.co.uk showed that the number of adverts for freelance candidates on the UK’s major IT and multi-sector recruitment sites increased by 4.7 %.

Taken alongside a small rise (1%) over the same period in adverts for full-time IT staff, the growth means IT recruitment has now been expanding during each of the past nine quarters.

Reflecting on its findings, jobadswatch hinted that the upturn was on course to continue, as it pointed out that contractors are usually the first in the door once end-users perceive hiring conditions to have improved.

Although those same freelance workers are also first out when conditions deteriorate, the site’s leaning towards them being a positive indicator of recruitment tallies with the latest comments from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation.

Outlining feedback from recruiters who placed staff in temporary posts in October, the agency staffing body spoke of an “improvement in employers' optimism about their future hiring intentions”.

Regionally and on an annual basis, the jobadswatch dataset shows Inner London added the most new IT contracts in the third quarter (in contrast to the North West where IT contractor job adverts fell by 13%). AGILE was the fastest growing skill on a contract basis (relevant ads up 38%), followed by .Net (ads up 23%).

None of the contract IT skills in the sample were less sought-after over the period, yet IT candidates looking for public sector work on a freelance basis saw relevant ads abate by almost 40%. Financial services added more IT contracts than a year ago, as did software houses - the second fastest growing end-user of IT contractors, after retailers (ads up 24%).