According to a report recently released by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, IT contractor hiring rates stabilised last month.
The REC released figures highlighting that umbrella service workers and freelancers working within the IT field is currently at a rate of 52.1. While this was down slightly from August’s figure of 53.9, it is still up from June and July’s 51.9 and 51.6 figures respectively, the REC said.
The lack of skilled, experienced temporary IT professionals has been a persistent problem, the Confederation reported. Employers polled by the REC said that the most often looked for skill sets include business analysis, business intelligence, project management, solution architecture, .Net, and Linux.
KPMG’s Bernard Brown, head of business services and partner for the firm that co-authored the study with the REC, commented on the research findings, remarking that the IT contractor jobs market is so closely linked with the entirety of the UK’s economy that it simply cannot be evaluated on its own without taking broader economic factors into account. There are still many parts of the country that are still struggling to recover, even as other regions in the UK are exhibiting signs of recovery, Mr Brown stated, adding that the fragility of the UK jobs market means that it must be handled with the utmost care in order to ward off catastrophe.
The credit crisis of 2008 has had long-lasting and widespread consequences for the UK and the rest of the eurozone, triggering a double-dip recession here at home while the rest of the EU struggles with the economic burdens of members in dire financial straits such as Greece.
