Contractors in niche areas, including engineering and the accounting and financial sectors, are in increasing demand by contracting clients as candidate numbers continues to fall.
The April 2015 Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC)/KPMG Report on Jobs shows temporary pay increasing at the fastest rate since July 2007, but also warns of a jobs crisis due to growing skills gap.
Contractor demand is strong, alongside rate increases, with April seeing an acceleration of pay growth for contractors. The decline in the availability of permanent staff is at the sharpest rate in five months, further driving up contractor demand as clients seek short-term staffing solutions while waiting to find the right permanent candidate.
Although contractor agency billings increased during April, the rise was the slowest for six months, suggesting that there are not enough suitably skilled contractors to fill available vacancies.
While agencies struggle to place suitable candidates into temporary roles, contractors with niche skills should take advantage this financial opportunity, advises ContractorCalculator CEO Dave Chaplin: “Demand for contractors in specialist disciplines, such as IT & computing, continues, but while the shortage of specialists in these areas remains contractors are well placed to fill these gaps.”
Kevin Green, REC chief executive warns that the skills gap hints at a deeper problem: “We’ve…seen higher numbers of vacancies being posted by businesses as they seek to capitalise on increased demand. This is good for job seekers…however we question how sustainable this jobs boom is as skill and talent shortages become rife. The availability of staff has been falling for two years, with 40% of recruiters saying that the situation is getting worse month on month.”
Contractor availability was down in all four English regions. The North experienced the slowest expansion, while the Midlands remained the strongest-performing region for contractor agency billings in April. As a UK hub for automotive and aerospace engineering, the Midlands remains a growing source of contracts for both engineering contractors and those with IT and computing expertise.
Of the five core contracting disciplines, engineering ranked fourth, ahead of accounting/financial and IT & computing, which were in fifth and sixth positions respectively.
Construction was at the bottom of the table in ninth place, below executive/professional which ranked eighth. Even though these disciplines languish in last place, they remain in strong growth territory.