February was a bit of a mixed bag for contract workers, according to new data from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s latest study.
The REC’s latest monthly jobs report found that pay for freelancers and umbrella company contractors rose at a breakneck pace this past February – the fastest rates have gone up since July of last year. That’s the good news, however; the bad news is that while demand for interim workers was still positive last month, growth was slow – in fact the slowest it’s been over the last three months.
Nobody likes to think that demand is starting to drop off. I know I’m not particularly chuffed to imagine that job opportunities for interim workers is beginning to normalise, but on the other hand we have had some absolutely incredibly high levels of demand recently and most industry experts agreed that the good times couldn’t possibly last forever.
What is surprising – or at least surprising to me anyway – is that the skills shortage is still very much doing its worst to the British employment industry. Many firms are still scrambling to fill positions that they simply can’t due to a lack of qualified candidates, and it’s running the risk of placing some very serious constraints on the economic recovery of the UK if it’s permitted to continue in the long term. I would think that businesses would be keen to snap up whatever talent they can get!
However, there is one possible theory as to what’s behind the drop-off in demand that also explains the soaring salaries for temporary workers: firms are doing their best to hold on to skilled workers. By shifting their focus to finding new contract workers, employers are instead taking steps to ensure the freelancers they do have good working relationships with are going to stick around for the long run – and let’s face it, the best way to do that is to pay them handsomely for their expertise. It’s most definitely a long-term plan that these companies are putting into effect, though they are perhaps gambling on the idea that they will still be able to find quality workers in order to grow their businesses further down the line. Only time will tell if this strategy will work out for the better, but I’d like to say that it’s a good idea.
