The number of IT contracting positions available within the City of London have decreased recently, according to new recruitment figures.
While the number of freelance and umbrella worker positions for IT professionals are relatively unchanged overall for the country, the number of new positions created last month in the City was down by approximately 1,000 from October’s figures with only 1,790 new opportunities.
The news was a serious wake-up call for recruitment experts, leading many to call upon the Government to take action to revitalise the employment environment in the financial heart of the UK. Getting the City’s jobs market moving once more is incredibly important, these experts insist, and many have hopes that ministers will adopt sensible approaches when it comes to the review of future changes, especially possible investment bank ring fencing changes, which run the risk of making the system less secure, resulting in the needless loss of so many finance jobs.
IT contract workers have traditionally been in demand by the financial sector as more and more banks and building societies modernise their systems and transition to cloud-based computing solutions. Many financial service providers this year have experienced widespread online banking issues, possibly illustrating the dire need for skilled, experienced IT workers to prevent such issues occurring in the future and to remedy such problems quickly and efficiently in the event that they occur once more, but unless more of these freelancers are taken on by the financial sector, many feel that history is bound to repeat itself.
