IT contractor demand grew slightly in January

Demand for IT contractors hardly moved in January, returning less than a single point difference in index score compared to lacklustre December 2017.

Published last week, the monthly Report on Jobs scores demand for temporary IT & Computing staff in the first month of 2018 at 59.6, up from 59.3 in the previous report.

Suggesting seasonal factors may still be at play (around Christmas can be a quiet time for hires), January of 2017 was the last time IT contractor demand showed a smaller index score.

But recorded by the REC, the score of 59.6 for last month indicates appetite for IT contractors still grew in January, as any score over 50.0 signals growth on the month before.

There’s also been growth in the number of IT contractor skill shortages, as in December they were 10 technology areas deemed hard to source on a contract basis. Now there are 14.

They are; Automation Testing, CAD, Cyber Security, DevOps, Digital, Gaming, GDPR, IT Project Management, IT Support, Java, Oracle Fusion, Python, SC Development and UI/UX.

Several of those are scarce on a permanent basis too (at least the first seven), alongside IT generalists, J2EE, .Net, Salesforce, Software Engineering and Web Development.