IT contractor rates - average hourly and daily contract rate analysis

The findings from the latest SkillsMarket/ATSCo iProfile Skills Survey (quarter 1 2007) showed a continuing increase in the reported (median) hourly rates of IT contractors (up 5% over the previous quarter) whilst permanent salaries remained virtually unchanged since Q4.06 (a fall of less than 1%).

This is good news for IT contractors, who have seen a total increase of 14% in their median pay rates since Q1 2006.

Whilst the pay rates of permanent IT professionals remained virtually unchanged during Q1 2007, the iProfile Skills Survey showed that they had experienced a total increase of 8% in their median pay rates since Q1 2006.

Ann Swain, CEO of the Association of Technology Staffing Companies (ATSCo), commented: "2006 was a fantastic year for the IT recruitment market and the results of the iProfile Skills Survey for Q1 2007 have shown that 2007 is off to a similar start. IT contractors in particular are proving to be in high demand and this has been reflected in the 5% increase in their pay rates during the first quarter of the year."

Leading IT recruitment companies provided the following comments on the market:

Julie-Anne Brooks, Director at JM Contracts, commented: "For JM Contracts recruitment has either remained at the same levels or increased in Q1 2007, it depends on the area of the business you are looking at. We noticed that there were significant increases in the demand for support service type roles predominantly at a junior level. At the senior level however we felt demand was fairly stagnant on last year. Looking forward we expect the next 6 months to continue in the same direction with continued increases in rates as demand outstrips supply."

Aidan Anglin, Managing Director of IT Recruitment Services at Spring, commented: "We've seen a continued increase in the demand for both contract and permanent IT staff over the last quarter. This has been reflected in a steady although modest increase in the pay rates for IT professionals, with more significant increases noticed in pockets of skills.

Over the last year there was an influx in the launch of new IT projects and as some of these are now coming to an end we're finding that testers are particularly high in demand. We've also noticed an increase in the demand for IT professional with J2EE.

We're predicting that the market will continue to improve over the next year with slight rises in the pay rates and demand of IT professionals."

Stephanie Elliott, Managing Director of Volt Europe, commented: "Volt Europe has seen an increase in the demand for permanent staff during the past quarter, continuing the trend from earlier in the year and helped by a buoyant financial services sector. This upward trend was driven partly by the increased requirements of the ITIL standard, continuing Mergers & Acquisitions activities as well as a trend by the smaller entities to outsource some of their non mission-critical back office functions, with the resulting requirements for integration, project management and quality control activities."