The IT recruitment market is in good shape. The number
of jobs on offer is slowly but surely increasing, and salaries and
contract rates are also rising. "The overall message is that there
are plenty of jobs," says Paul Smith, group marketing director at
recruitment firm Harvey Nash.
The number of jobs advertised on the web in the second quarter
of 2005 was well over half as much again as a year ago, according
to the latest SSL/Computer Weekly Survey of Appointments Data and
Trends. That is a big increase, but most of it took place in the
third and fourth quarters of 2004. Relative to the first quarter of
2005, the second quarter figure was only 3% up; indeed, the total
number of jobs advertised in each of the past three quarters has
been the same.
Looking further into the past, this quarter's figure is at
roughly the same level as three years ago, but is still only a
third of the level of a year before that, the second quarter of
2001. That illustrates how dramatically the market plummeted
between 2001 and 2002, and how far there is still to go before we
get back to the 2001 level.
In the contract market the position over the past three quarters
has remained much the same. The number of jobs advertised this time
was virtually double that of a year ago, but again most of the
market growth came in the third and fourth quarters of 2004.
The average increase in salary across all 55 job types was 2.8%,
exactly the same as in the first quarter, and almost the same as
the headline inflation rate, which stood at 2.9% in both May and
June.
This single growth metric conceals significant variations. Smith
says, "Most of the increase is going to the quality end - highly
skilled managers and highly skilled technicians. Companies are
frequently making pay rises on merit, rather than across the
board."
Professionals without the skills and expertise in demand are
having difficulty earning as much as they did three years ago. One
reason for this is that many routine development jobs are now
outsourced to Asia. "Companies are using Vietnam and India as a
factory," says Smith. "The developer market is the loser in
that."
IT directors are naturally enough at the top end of the pay
scale, and for the second quarter in succession the average salary
offered to them was at a new high. The figure this time was
£96,271.
With contractors, the average increase in rates was a slightly
lower at 2.5%. Rates for developers, however, increased by
significantly more, upwards of 10%. Rates here are typically well
over double that paid to permanent staff. For example, the average
salary for a mainstream developer is just over £39,000; the average
contract rate for the same job is £47 an hour, which translates to
nearly £83,000 a year.
Among permanent staff, the biggest increase in demand was for
networking specialists, with more than twice as many jobs available
as a year ago. There were also higher than average increases for
systems staff and for technical support professionals. These three
areas also showed the biggest growth in the first quarter.
In the contract market too there was a big increase in demand
for networking staff. Demand for systems people rose by only a
little more than the average, but this was enough to make them the
biggest single group, just above developers, accounting for 31% of
all contract jobs advertised.
Geographically, the jobs on offer to permanent staff rose by
well above the average in outer London, but rose by less than a
quarter in the centre of the capital. The picture is similar in
contract positions. The discrepancy is hard to explain, especially
as recruitment by the financial sector was buoyant (up 85% on a
year ago). It seems likely to be part of a trend, however, as the
pattern has been maintained now for two consecutive quarters.
Also, for the second quarter in succession, jobs available for
both permanent and freelance professionals more than doubled in
Scotland and Northern Ireland.
In both the contract and permanent staff markets there was a
notable upwards surge in demand for people with mainframe and other
proprietary skills. In both markets the number of jobs available
more than doubled.
These types of jobs still account for well under 10% of both
markets, so the surge has made little impact on the software skills
league table. Indeed, the trend is firmly in the opposite
direction. A landmark in IT development history was reached during
the quarter as Cobol fell out of the top 100 skills for the first
time.
Younger readers may not have heard of Cobol, and most will be
unfamiliar with it. More mature readers will recall that Cobol was
the most valuable development skill of all throughout the 1970s and
1980s. It was still number one in SSL's skills league table as
recently as 1991.
Cobol lost its pre-eminence during the client/server revolution
of the early 1990s, but remained popular, and was still 14th in the
skills league table only five years ago. Since then it has been
rapidly falling from favour.
Emphasising this passing of the old world, two other prominent
third-generation languages, Fortran and Pascal, both fell out of
the skills league table this quarter.
At the top end of the table there has been remarkably little
change. The adoption of Microsoft .net development technology
continues to increase, with .net consolidating its place (it is in
10th position, the place it has held in each of the past four
quarters) and C# rising to a new high of 11th this time. C#
features in four times as many ads as a year ago, and .net in well
over three times as many. Active Server Pages is also featuring
strongly, and is now up to 14th.
In contrast, Java features in only 33%more job adverts than a
year ago, an increase that is well below the market average.
More surprisingly, straightforward C (without suffix) has
continued its steady rise back up the league table and is now
third, its highest position for eight years. Possibly this is a
reflection of its popularity with embedded system developers.
Linux is also consolidating its position in the lower reaches of
the top 20, at the expense of Unix and Solaris. The latter is 26th
this time, the first time it has been outside the top 25 since the
beginning of 2000. Unix has fallen four places; it was briefly top
of the table at this time last year.
The SSL survey suggests that Linux is also hurting Windows. Both
Windows NT and Windows 2000 saw growth in demand of half the market
average, and both have fallen well down the league table as a
result.
How the survey is conducted
This article is based on information contained in The
SSL/Computer Weekly Quarterly Survey of Appointments Data and
Trends.
The survey analyses advertisements for IT professionals on the
web and in the trade press and the quality national dailies and
Sundays. It is primarily intended for recruitment agencies and CIOs
with a substantial recruitment requirement.
The posts advertised are broken down in the survey into 55 job
categories. Within each job category, the survey provides details
of the number of posts advertised and the average and median
national salaries offered for the last quarter and for each of the
previous four.
The survey provides further analyses within each job category by
platform type, industry sector and regional location. It also
provides a breakdown for the major job categories of the technical
skills most in demand. In each analysis, it again details the
average salary on offer for each of the past five quarters.
The price of a single issue of the survey is £250, and for an
annual subscription is £350. This covers four issues, and includes
a free copy of a Windows-based software product on CD, which allows
selection of combinations of region, industry and software skills
for a specified job type. Readers can order it at
www.salaryservices.co.uk.