Amid the worst UK recession since the computer was
invented, the decline in the job market is continuing, but
slowing.
The recession maintained its pressure on the IT jobs market in
the second quarter. The number of full time jobs on offer is less
than half what it was a year ago, while the number of contract
positions advertised fell by nearly two-thirds, according to the
computerweekly.co.uk Survey of Appointments Data and Trends
compiled by Jobadswatch for Salary Services Ltd (SSL).
The good news is that
the rate of decline is falling. There were only 10% fewer
permanent jobs advertised than in the first quarter of this year,
and 18% less contract positions. Both markets are still providing
more opportunities than they were in 2003, at the nadir of the last
market downturn.
So things are not as bad as they might be considering that the
decline in GDP (gross domestic product) over the past year is the
highest ever recorded, which means this recession has been the
worst in the UK since the computer was invented.
And it may be that we have reached the low point of this
downturn now. According to Harvey Nash Group Marketing Director
Paul Smith, "The permanent jobs market won't decline very much
more: it will hold at this level for the rest of this year".
When will it recover?
So the focus is no longer on how far the market will go down:
the question now is when significant recovery starts to get under
way. Here all the analysts and commentators are agreed that it will
be sometime in the future.
The IMF (International Monetary Fund), for example, believes
that the recession in the UK has ended but is forecasting
negligible growth (just 0.2%) in GDP in 2010.
So for IT professionals the recommended strategy is to sit
tight. Paul Smith's advice is "keep the job you've got unless it is
at very serious risk; be flexible to retain it; and adopt personal
due diligence on any job offer you may receive".
Regionally, the London area suffered the most damage during the
second quarter, with permanent jobs down 61% on a year ago,
compared to a 50% fall for the rest of the country.
The capital now accounts for less than a third of the total
market, compared to more than 40% before the recession.
The Midlands and the West were the best places to be job hunting
in the second quarter, though even in these regions the fall over
the three months was 46%.
In the contract market, there was much less regional variation.
The area where jobs held up best was the North West (down 50%), but
the area with the biggest decline was next door, with North East
jobs falling 68%.
Financial companies are continuing to suffer badly from the
effects of the credit crunch, with permanent jobs down two-thirds
on a year ago.
Most other industry sectors are down by around a half, though
government is still bucking the trend: jobs here were down 39%.
Public sector
The contract market again shows less variation: here public
sector jobs are down 60%, while all the other non-IT industry
sectors reduced advertising by a little more, around
two-thirds.
In the software industry, which is the biggest sector, jobs were
down 57%, while electronics and comms companies reduced contract
advertising least of all, by just under a half.
Salaries on offer for full time posts continued to decline, at
least for junior staff who saw an annual fall of 0.6% over the
quarter (this compares with a decline in the headline inflation
rate of 1.6% in June).
For senior positions advertised, however, remuneration actually
rose compared to a year ago, by 0.7%.
The same differentiation appears in the contract market, where
there were significant falls in rates over the second quarter, with
junior staff being offered on average 4.5% less than a year ago and
senior staff 3.3% less.
Harvey Nash's Paul Smith says of the variation, "with good
people, companies are having to pay significant sums to pull them
out from the secure positions they have got. At the bottom end,
there is pressure to reduce rates.
"People are trying to retain their contractors while cutting
their rates."
There were some interesting changes in the league table of
skills most in demand during the second quarter, with two newcomers
in the top 20 and another in the top 25.
The latter is Flash, which makes its bow in the IT skills most
in demand table (opposite) at number 22. This Adobe product,
originally developed by Macromedia as an animation tool, has
steadily evolved into a complete website development package, and
as it has done so it has slowly gained in popularity.
No Flash in the pan
It has been in the table for eight years now, starting in the
bottom reaches of the top 100, and reaching the top 50 at the
beginning of 2006. It remained in the 40s until a year ago, when it
leapt to 33rd, and has continued climbing since then.
In 20th place is CRM (customer relationship management) after a
sudden leap of seven places up the table this quarter.
It has consistently featured in the table just outside the top
25 for many years, and its elevation this time is due to a more
dramatic decline in demand for other skills than for CRM itself (it
featured in 21% less advertisements than a year ago).
Just above CRM in the table is the other newcomer, Ajax, one of
just two skills in the upper reaches of the table that is in
greater demand than a year ago (the other is PHP).
Demand for Ajax together with Javascript/Jscript has been
booming for several quarters (Javascript entered the top 10 for the
first time in the last quarter and has stayed in ninth place this
time).
Decline of Java
Yet interest in Java itself has been steadily declining over the
same period (it is currently seventh, having been as high as third
as recently as the first quarter of last year), and so has demand
for J2EE (now in its lowest position since it first appeared in the
table in 2005).
The migration away from Java is real, says Harvey Nash's Paul
Smith. "The trend in development is towards .Net. The economy is
playing to Microsoft's strengths, as the cost of ownership is so
much lower".
So the apparently contradictory surge in demand for Javascript
and Ajax, "perhaps means we are beginning to see a shortage of
skills in those areas".
Demand exceeding supply is certainly the explanation for the
continuing rise up the table of PHP, according to Smith: "There are
hardly any PHP people around".
So here is a skill that anybody looking to make themselves
recession-proof might look at acquiring. PHP has moved up the table
for eight consecutive quarters now, and is currently in 14th
place.
The table makes good reading for Microsoft in most respects.
One piece of bad news for the Redmond giant, however, is that
Vista has fallen out of the top 50 after just one quarter in it: it
is down to 60th this time.
The new operating system is still failing to win converts in the
corporate market.
About the survey
This article is based on information from the Computer Weekly
Quarterly Survey of Appointments Data and Trends, compiled by
Jobadswatch for Salary Services Ltd.
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 analysis 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 £495, which is the
same price as an annual subscription. The annual subscription
covers four issues, and includes access to the SSL/Jobadswatch
system, an online salary survey which provides all the information
available in the hard copy survey, plus a powerful recruitment
search system, allowing selection of combinations of region,
industry and software skills for a specified job type.
Readers may also now access
www.jobadswatch.co.uk to obtain
salary and trend details for a single job. This incorporates a
one-stop shop listing all the jobs placed on the web in the past
few weeks. The price of this "My IT Job" service is £14.95.