The recession is definitely having an effect on the IT job market and demand for particular kinds of skills, whether you work as a contractor or as a permie. For me the biggest impact so far is the fall in IT Contractor rates. In the last two roles I have had, I have had to take a 10% cut in pay! Companies in various sectors have taken this step – BT, Barclays, RBS, Fujitsu, are just a few of the big names. Companies will always look to apply cost cutting measures to contractors first – either by cutting rates, or terminating contracts early. At the same time, permies are not altogether immune as their salaries are frozen or bonuses withdrawn.

Also, the jobs market is saturated with skilled, experienced workers who are unemployed. This in itself will push pay rates down as people are willing to work for less money.

Companies themselves know they can offer less. Even this afternoon, I was talking to a recruitment consultant from a very reputable agency. She said basically that the client is ‘looking for good value for money’. In other words, her client knows people are out there willing to work for less, so basically they want to get the best people in for their project, and the cheapest price.

Even as I look at the job market stats for the various IT skills, I have noticed a number of trends:

·         A large increase in jobs posted for work in the NHS. The rank for NHS IT jobs jumped +30 places over the same period last year. While the private sector is slashing budgets and cutting costs, the NHS is forging ahead with the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) which incorporates big projects such as Choose and Book, The Spine, N3 Network, NHS Care Records among others. Thus, many IT workers have moved from private sector into the NHS.

·         Large increase in demand for workers with Security Clearance. Again, this has to do with the fact that government projects in IT are forging ahead. Large IT service providers who get these contracts need people who are already cleared or at least willing to go through the process.

·         Large increase for people with skills in VMWare. A number of companies are taking on server consolidation projects, whereby they are scaling down drastically the number of physical servers in their datacentres/offices and transferring business-critical functions to virtual servers. This is saving many companies a lot of money – in terms of reduced electricity and air conditioning costs, hardware and IT admin costs, and even office space overheads. Another angle on this is also the environmental benefits of using less electricity to run physical servers.