Number of IT contractor jobs advertised plummets

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Number of IT contractor jobs advertised plummets

Posted Apr 21, 2009

The number of IT contracts advertised has fallen by a third over the previous quarter, and by a shocking 62% since the same period last year.

The latest quarterly IT jobs market survey, conducted by Salary Services Limited, shows that the number of advertised jobs in IT as a whole has more than halved over the past 12 months.

Massive drop in contract roles advertised

The contract market is historically always the first to feel the impact of a downturn.

According to the survey, the number of contracts advertised by agencies has fallen by 32.1% compared with the previous quarter (from 22,594 contract roles to 15,371).

The number of contract roles advertised has shrunk by a massive 62% since the end of March 2008.

Rates have suffered too - down by 2.2% since the last quarter of 2008.

London contractors suffer the most

Although contract vacancies have shrunk across all regions of the UK, it is the capital which is bearing the brunt of the downturn.

The number of contracts in Inner London is down by 31.5% on the last quarter of 2008, and by 35.6% in Outer London.

Finance in "free fall"

The survey shows that the demand for IT contractors in finance is in "virtual free fall", seeing a drop of 35.3% on the previous quarter. Overall, the number of contract roles in finance has dropped by nearly 75% over the past year. All other industry sectors are affected too - manufacturing (down 39.2%), retail (down 43.9%), media (down 38.8%) and software houses down by 27.2% on the previous quarter.

Outlook for IT contractors

The authors of the respected SSL report believe that the trend of declining job opportunities is likely to continue throughout 2009. They suggest that anyone in IT should make sure they keep up-to-date with the most in demand skills.

"Contractors currently in work should use all available resources to update their portfolio. Alternatively those developers coming up to retirement with old legacy skills such as Cobol may well now be in demand to maintain mainframe systems still operated in some financial centres."

We will look at how various technical skills have fared over the past quarter in an upcoming article.

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