Guide to the latest IT Contractor Rates

The IT Job Board has released a new IT salary / contract rate monitor, which provides regional contract rate data, and the skills most in demand at any one time.

This online tool is interactive, and provides a graphical representation of the permanent and contract markets according to region, and skills, both by rate and by demand.

600 contract and permanent salaries are pulled in from the ITJobsWatch site, which is also the source of Contract Eye's own Contract Rate Checker. The new tool breaks then down the rates by region and skill.

Current contract rate trends

According to the monitor, 35% of IT jobs currently advertised are contract roles, and 65% permanent. The South, and London in particular, account for the lion's share of both perm and contract roles.

To give an example of the dominance of London in both markets, there are currently 605 contract ASP.NET contract roles advertised in London, compared to 68 in the West Midlands, and 29 in the North East.

Unsurprisingly, there are also significant rate variations between skills and regions;

The average salary/rate for a JAVA expert in London is £55,000 p.a./£475 per day. In the South West, the figures are £38,500 p.a./£338 per day.

Similarly, a C++ specialist can command on average £60,000 p.a./£575 per day in the capital, compared to just £34,500 p.a./£275 per day in the West Midlands.

Optimism for the IT industry

The online tool also provides a benchmarking tool, which highlights that there are currently 1.52 million people in the IT sector - which represents an impressive 1 in every 18 employed people.

Encouragingly, IT as an industry is forecast to grow at 2.19 per year over the next year, almost five times faster than the UK average.

It also highlights market trends - indicating the latest hot topics and skills in demand, which currently include: NoSQL, social media, cloud computing and mobility.

You can try the IT Salary/Rate Monitor here.