The Recruitment and Employment Confederation has some excellent news for freelancers and umbrella company contractors when it comes to temporary job billings.
The REC says that the last three months were absolutely brilliant when it comes to the rate that temporary job vacancies have risen. In fact, December turns out to have exhibited the strongest growth seen in the last three months. Not only that, but the number of appointments for short term staff positions increased at a fantastic rate as well.
Now I know what you’re thinking – that the big hike was just from the run-up to the festive season with high street shops needing extra retail workers to cope with the crowds, but that’s actually not the case. It turns out that the sectors that experienced the biggest growth were for blue collar, nursing and medical care workers. Goes to show what you know, eh? Likewise the North of England was where the action was, with the region showing the most growth. The South was a shambles, showing up in last place for growth across all regions.
Even more interesting – to me, at least – is that pay rates went up whilst temporary staff ability went down. One is likely a result of the other; as there are fewer contractors to go around, firms have been providing more lucrative pay packets in order to remain competitive.
This is of course excellent news for anyone looking to add a new client or two to their portfolio right now. While most people assume January is a bit of a slow period of time when it comes to building or growing a business, there’s still plenty of residual demand sure to be left over from December – and with the amount of available freelancers dwindling slowly but surely the demand for skilled and qualified temporary workers is only going to continue to rocket upwards.
Just think about it for a moment: if firms could find permanent employees to fill these roles, wouldn’t they have done so already? No, the need for contract workers is not going to go away any time soon. In fact I predict it’s going to just increase higher and higher, especially with the skills shortage raging so strong. Do yourself a favour and get in while the going is good – you won’t be sorry.
