The Recruitment and Employment Confederation that demand for freelancers and umbrella company contractors has recently hit a mind boggling 15 year high.
The REC’s latest jobs report found last month that it hasn’t been since 1999 that temporary billings grew at such a rate. The primary driver behind the gargantuan levels of demand can be laid solely at the feet of the skills shortage that’s been gripping the UK for some time now.
To that end, REC says that candidate availability fell so hard that the last month it was this bad was November of 2004, nearly ten years ago. It wasn’t just permanent staff figures that fell – it turns out that temporary staff availability also took a massive hit, though not nearly as catacylsmic, and these events have served to drive pay rates for interim workers through the roof.
In other words, the employment market is courting freelancers and contract workers very aggressively right now. This means that a skilled and qualified contractor can essentially write his or her own ticket when it comes to picking the most lucrative and longest-lasting contracts at the moment, since employers are hurting so badly when it comes to these vacancies.
If you ask me, if I was a freelance specialist I would strike whilst the iron is hot. Get yourself a good contract position now, as either one of two things will happen in the not-so-distant future: either the market will respond by producing a glut of new workers, or employers will grow frustrated in their recruitment efforts here at home and simply outsource their positions to overseas contractors instead. Either way, the supply of massively well-paying contract positions will most certainly run out eventually, and I sincerely believe that it will happen sooner rather than later.
Let’s be honest: the employment market is unlikely to withstand this amount of pressure for much longer, especially with the economic recover relying upon the success of British industry of all types. Whether it’s a British-owned small business or a larger company there’s a point when the cost/benefit analysis comes down on the side of scaling back their use of local freelance personnel, so don’t delay too long if you possibly can’t. You’ll only be kicking yourself if you miss the boat!
