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Demand for IT contractors down by over 25%

Published on Jan 26, 2009 | | Contract Rate Checker

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The latest SSL IT jobs survey shows that the decline in advertised jobs is worse than it was after the dot com crash, and is approaching the recruitment levels last seen in the early 90's. The demand for IT contractors is also down by nearly 27% on the last quarter.

Permanent IT Roles

According to the Salary Services Limited (SSL) January 2009 report, IT recruitment as a whole is down an astonishing 36.1% on the same period last year.

Advertised salaries for permanent IT roles have not risen compared to January 2008 - the first time in 16 years this has happened.

IT Contract Roles

The number of IT contract roles advertised has fallen for the fourth quarter in a row - down 26.9% on the previous quarter.

According to the SSL report, average IT contract rates are down 2.3% quarter-on-quarter, but some roles have seen declines of over 10%.

Specific IT Skills

This tallies with data provided by IT Jobs Watch, which shows average rates for developers have declined by 10% over the past year, with falls in SQL Server (9.4%), SQL (9.07%), Java (7.63%) rates, to name just a few specific skill areas.

The top ten IT contractor skills (aside from the oft-required "Microsoft Office") are currently: SQL, C, Oracle, SQL Server, C#, Java, .NET, SAP, ASP and Unix.

According to the SSL report, the demand for IT contractors is down by around 25% in all regions, with financial services contractors particularly hardly hit, followed by a heavy decline in retail contract roles. Demand for project managers and business analysts are both down over 30%.