CURRENT STATS: UK Developer Roles (permanent and contract)

People are always interested and have an "opinion" on whether the current jobs market is improving or in decline.   There are often debates and conjecture about what effects certain events, legislation, etc. can have on jobs.  It can definitely make for some very lively discussions in pubs and at drinks and dinner parties!    

At Prospectus, we don't like to work with conjecture, as we prefer to rely on statistics.  Whilst we always have a "feel" and our own "statistics" in our niche MultiValue market, we were interested to see if this was a reflection of the wider IT market.  So, we decided to investigate and look for statistics to see what the real current state of play is.

IT Jobs Watch is a site which collates data and creates statistics from IT job roles which are advertised.  The images below are the results of the following query:

Developer roles based in the UK for the last 6 months: Figure 1 shows permanent roles and Figure 2 shows contract roles.

Figure 1:  Permanent roles

Figure 2: Contract roles

Conclusion:    

The general statistics show that there has been a steady decline in both contract and permanent IT roles over the last 2 years.  

At Prospectus, whilst we wouldn't disagree with the above stats, we would say that in recent weeks we feel that there is more light at the end of the tunnel and more positivity, but it's early days and only time will tell.  Let's all keep fingers crossed that the trend we are beginning to feel continues in the upward vein throughout this year.