While most freelancers and umbrella company contractors have been experiencing pay rate increases over the past two years, there’s one sector that has actually seen negative growth when it comes to the average daily rate earned, a new study recently revealed.
Since 2010, the average daily rate paid to skilled and experienced IT contractors has dropped by 7 per cent, according to the IT Jobs Watch September 2012 chart. The research found that IT workers on average earn £388 per diem, regardless of whether they work in the private sector or the public sector, yet in September of 2010, IT workers were earning £415 a day.
New IT contractor pay has also fallen as well, as the average daily rate for a qualified but inexperienced IT professional used to be £235 in 2010, but now stands at £230 today. In addition, the top tier of IT workers – around 10 per cent of the total IT professional workforce – now only earn over £550 on a daily basis, as opposed to their more than £600 a day pay rate in 2011.
However, there is a bit of a silver lining to all these gray clouds. While IT contract workers may have experienced a 7 per cent drop in pay rates, developers have experienced an increase of nearly 8 per cent to their rates from 2010. Two years ago, you could be expected to earn around £32.50 an hour if you were a typical developer, but this figure has since grown over the past 24 months to now stand at £35 an hour on average, a total increase of 7.7 per cent.
