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Demand for IT contractors falls for sixth successive quarter, but rate of decline slowing

Published on Jul 21, 2009 | | Contract Rate Checker

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The latest quarterly SSL/JobAdsWatch report shows that the demand for IT contractors has fallen for the sixth successive quarter, but the pace of decline has slowed.

Permanent IT Jobs

In the permanent IT jobs market, the demand of IT staff declined by 10.1% in the second quarter of 2009, compared to the first. Although this is still a startling fall, it is a marked improvement on the 26.3% rate of decline we witnessed three months ago. Over the past year, the number of permanent IT jobs on offer has fallen by 54.2% according to the survey.

IT Contracts

The second quarter of 2009 represents the sixth quarter in which the demand for contractors has declined - with a drop of 18.2% in the last quarter. This compares with a fall of 32% in the previous quarterly report.

Skills

The demand for contract IT skills fairly accurately matches the general demand of permanent IT skills, although the number of contract vacancies available has shrunk at a far higher rate over the past year than the number of full-time roles.

In the past quarter, some skills fared better than others, with demand for .NET skills down 16.4%, Oracle down 8.6%, but the demand for JAVA skills actually rose by 1.8%. When you look at the annual decline for the key IT skills, these latest figures don't seem quite as shocking, with demand for all the major developer skills down between 63% and 71%.

Industries

Given the rapid pace of the downturn in financial services, it will come as some relief to see the demand for IT contractors from the industry rise by 0.5% during the last quarter.

Other industries have seen further drops in demand for contractors, according to the report, with public sector vacancies down 36.9% in the quarter, media down 28.3%, and a drop of over 13% for software houses/consultancies.

Further information

You can access further details on the latest quarterly report at JobsAdsWatch.