Crystal Umbrella

The UK computer skills council has found that temporary and contract IT workers are more in demand than permanent IT employees. Reporting on the first quarter, e-skills UK stated that there was a 10% increase in demand for IT contractors during this period while demand for permanent IT workers only grew by 4%.

This data is based primarily on IT services that are based within London and the South. The report suggests that the increased opportunity for IT contractors comes courtesy of the financial services sector and the electronics industry. This has also resulted in an increased hourly rate for IT contractors in these sectors as the increased demand has pushed pay rates upwards in the region of 3% between the months of October 2009 and March 2010.

However, the average contractor who has seen a rise in income is really only better off by about 1.3% in real terms. E-skills stated that while many job boards are showing large wage increases, “an overall increase in ‘real pay’ has yet to materialise.”

With pay linked so closely to demand, IT contractors who are proficient in SMS, Prince Exchange, Windows NT, VPN and Windows 2000 are unlikely to see an upwards change in their pay rates in the foreseeable future. On the flip side, contractors who are skilled in 4GL, SCOM, CGI and CAM are likely to see a massive increase in demand and a subsequent rise in the rates they can charge.

According to a recent report, the number of IT staff currently employed is the highest for over seven years. However, current low demand is yielding fewer and fewer vacancies for contractors in the same sector. The Office of National Statistics counts 27,000 technology professionals currently unemployed in the UK.

The report, conducted by sector skills council e-skills UK, shows that ads for permanent jobs have fallen by 24%, and contractor jobs by 27%, over the last six months of 2008. Positions available for freelancers in the IT sector have fallen across all disciplines, with the largest fall in demand being for programmers, system designers and software engineers, each down by approximately 30%.

For guidance, the report recommends IT professionals and contractors alike to expand their skills into areas of technology which have continued to show a rise in demand, such as WAP, COM, Active and Sage, as well as programming environments like SQL, C, .NET, ASP, Java, Oracle and Unix.

“To us here at e-skills UK it would seem prudent, if you are in work, to bed down and make the most of what you’ve got,” the report states, “particularly in the contract market – after all, job openings are comparatively few and far between at the moment.”

Conclusively, the report emphasises that even though the current recession and slump in employment in the IT sector is difficult for many, the market looks considerably better now than it did in the early part of the decade.