The
UK IT jobs market entered recession in the third quarter, with
a second successive quarter-on-quarter decline in the number of
jobs advertised.
This brought to an end a five year period of slow but steady
expansion since the last downturn ended in 2003, and has ushered in
what will undoubtedly be a difficult time for many. "We are in for,
at a minimum, a tough 12 months," says Paul Smith, marketing
director at Harvey Nash Group.
Being realistic should not mean becoming despondent, though. The
damage is not as bad as might have been expected from the raft of
gloomy statistics emerging from the economy as a whole, with record
repossessions (up 50%) in the housing market and steadily
increasing unemployment (up by the largest amount in 17 years
during the quarter) accompanying what has been described as the
biggest economic crisis since the Great Slump of 1929.
There are still plenty of jobs available for people with the
skill set the market is looking for. According to Smith, this does
not mean .net and PHP.
"The message for anybody looking for a job is - get commercial.
Stop being a pure techie, and start understanding business," he
says.
Some organisations are still investing for the future. Demand
for graduate developers rose by more than a third compared to a
year ago, and with the number of computer science graduates
emerging from the universities in decline, those that do should
find that there are jobs waiting for them.
IT jobs advertised on the web during the third quarter fell by
9% relative to the second quarter, and by 7% relative to the same
period last year, according to the cwjobs.co.uk Survey of
Appointments Data and Trends compiled by Salary Services Ltd (SSL).
But they still stand at nearly four times the level of the low
point reached in 2003.
In the contract market, the decline has been steeper. Jobs on
offer in the third quarter were down 13% on the second quarter and
25% on a year ago.
"Low-end contractors have been hit very hard" says Smith. But in
this market there were still four times as many jobs on offer as in
mid-2003.
In the regions
London has been worst hit, with jobs down by more than a quarter
over a year ago. So have Scotland and Northern Ireland - this is
perhaps an indication of the dominant effect HBOS and the Royal
Bank of Scotland have on what is a very small market. When they
catch a cold, everybody sneezes. In the rest of the UK, the picture
is much brighter, with jobs actually up on a year ago, by an
average of 8% across all regions. Again the west side of the
country has fared a little better than the east.
This regional picture is to some extent influenced by the
fortunes of particular industry sectors. Financial institutions
advertised for a quarter less staff than a year ago the retail
sector also showed a double digit decline and the public sector was
well down too. All of these sectors are concentrated in London and
the south.
Manufacturing, on the other hand, takes place mainly in the
midlands and the north, and jobs advertised by this sector rose 11%
compared to a year ago, so these regions have not yet felt the
effects of recession (the electronics sector, which is tabulated
separately, has, in contrast, suffered very badly). Manufacturing
should be further boosted by the substantial decline in the value
of the pound against the dollar, which happened mainly in October
after the quarter under review had ended.
The contract market shows a rather different picture. Finance
sector advertising is down here by a whopping 41%, much more than
any other sector. But the public sector increased advertising for
freelances by a quarter, so government is clearly relying on a
policy of employing mainly temporary staff for the duration of the
period of uncertainty.
Salary stagnation
A big disincentive for any IT professional to move is the level
of salary on offer. Average salaries for permanent staff are
actually down on a year ago, by 0.7%, the first time this has
happened since the SSL survey started 20 years ago. Salaries are
down in 31 of the 55 job categories analysed. And this comes at a
time when price inflation, as measured by the government's
preferred consumer price index, is at a record level at 5.2% in
September.
IT directors have bucked the trend here. Salaries on offer for
these positions averaged more than £100,000 for only the second
time, 4% up on a year ago. Systems analysts also saw salaries on
offer rise typically by 5%.
In the contract market, things are a little better, with rates
up on average 1.0% over a year ago. They did fall, though, in 13 of
the 36 job categories analysed. Freelance developers are being
particularly squeezed, with rates for senior developers down 9%,
for mainstream staff down 4%, and for analyst/programmers down
3%.
Advertisers continue to look for managers, with these positions
showing double-digit growth compared to a year ago. The only area
where demand has remained more buoyant in the permanent staff
market is in PC support, where jobs are up 18% over a year ago. The
areas where decline was steepest were technical support, software
engineering and networking: jobs fell by 15% to 20% in each
case.
In the contract market demand fell for every type of job,
including PC support. The biggest fall, by more than a third, was
for development staff.
Skills in demand
The skills in demand among the positions that are on offer have
not changed fundamentally indeed, the top 10 skills are exactly the
same as in the second quarter, though there are a few changes from
this time last year.
The emphasis is more on the quality of the job applicant than on
the nature of the technical prowess acquired. According to Paul
Smith, "What people want is a high level of skill, and they are not
prepared to accept second best".
The most striking development in the league table is the
continuing fall of Unix, where demand fell by more than a third,
more than for any other top 25 skill apart from SAP. This has been
a steady trend for two or three years now. Unix is now down to
12th, just one place above Linux, and the open source alternative
will surely become the most popular Unix variant before long.
The top 25 skill increasing most in popularity is PHP, with the
jobs on offer up by more than a half on a year ago. In contrast,
demand for Microsoft's proprietary alternative, ASP, rose by just
2%. PHP now lies just outside the top 20, 14 places higher than in
the third quarter of 2007.
Demand for skills in Java programming methodologies continues to
decline, with demand for Java itself falling by more than a
quarter. Javascript, though, appeared in 15% more jobs than a year
ago, while Ajax continues to climb steadily and is now only just
outside the top 25.
About the survey
This article is based on information contained in cwjobs.co.uk
Quarterly Survey of Appointments Data and Trends, compiled by
Salary Services Limited (SSL).
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 quarters.
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 an annual
subscription costs £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 the survey
online.
