The Recruitment and Employment Confederation says that demand rates have streaked ever higher for contractors and freelancers last month.
The REC came out with yet another one of its monthly job reports, discovering that when it came to growth rates for temporary and interim billings for freelance personnel and umbrella company contractors, there was significant growth when compared to October’s figures. While it’s not like there was no demand for interim workers at all in October – demand was high even then – it was recorded as being even higher in November, good news for any contract workers looking for a job.
So far the big winners were IT workers, who were awarded an index figure of 63.3 for the month. While that sounds like nothing in particular out of context, it’s not bad at all: the REC says that a score of anything over 50 indicates growth, so it’s obviously working along at a fine clip. However, it looks like the lead IT contractors have been enjoying lately in the top spot is being whittled away slowly but surely; IT workers had a 65.5 index rating in October and a 66.2 rating in September, indicating that the market is slowly easing off for them.
Still, growth is growth, and with the majority of the different market sectors performing quite well it’s good to know that the economy seems to be firing on all cylinders. Now, I’m not as fully qualified an expert on market growth like those REC boffins are, but for what it’s worth I’m willing to bet that when December’s figures come round it’ll indicate even more growth, mostly on the back of the run up to the holiday season. I suppose this means that the retail sector will receive the biggest bump, but I’m sure there will be a knock-on effect across other markets as well.
Don’t ask me about how January is going to fare, though. If anything I’d expect a bit of a drop off in demand as most firms need a bit of breathing room after the Christmas season to re-assess and regroup; many retail outfits usually cut back their interim staff at this time as well, so expect those numbers to drop rather precipitously. Still, growth is up for the year and I’ll wager that even with a small correction in January that 2015 will feature more of the same.
