Contractor demand growth in Scotland reached near historic levels during November 2013, outpacing both the rest of the UK labour market and Scottish permanent recruitment. Agency billings “rose at a marked and accelerated pace”, at the fastest rate since January 2011.
The latest Bank of Scotland Report on Jobs also shows that all core contracting disciplines enjoyed strong vacancy growth, although three of the four contracting categories were at the bottom of the demand league table.
“The number of people appointed to both permanent and temporary jobs rose in the month while the number of vacancies available rose sharply,” says Bank of Scotland chief economist Donald MacRae.
“Employers are demonstrating their growing confidence in the continuation of the recovery in the Scottish economy,” he adds.
The IT and computing sector experienced a marginal increase in contractor demand during November, which took it to a 17-month high. The sector remained in third place in the demand league table behind nursing/medical/care and hotel /catering.
Engineering fell a place from fifth to sixth, with accounts, financial and executive and professional in seventh and eighth places respectively. Despite their low position in the performance table, the core contracting disciplines continue to perform strongly, but the four non-contracting sectors are simply experiencing even higher demand growth.
The stronger growth in the accounts, financial and executive and professional categories points to a sustained recovery of Scotland’s financial and interim sectors. Both of these sectors have performed poorly during 2013, relative to IT, engineering and construction.
Regionally, Glasgow saw the greatest demand for contractors for the second month running, and also experienced the greatest fall in contractor availability, alongside European oil and gas capital Aberdeen. Dundee, the UK’s video games centre, saw the weakest pay trends for both contractors and permanent employees.
The report’s Bank of Scotland Labour Market Barometer, an index used to determine the overall health of Scotland’s labour market, rose to its second-highest level since data collection began in January 2013. This is “consistent with a sharp improvement in Scottish labour market conditions and one that was stronger than the UK average”.