Clients are forecasting a shortage of skilled IT and engineering contractors for the rest of the year, according to June 2013’s Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) Jobs Outlook. In fact, IT and engineering contractors are currently in the second and third places of REC’s skills shortages league table.
Overall, the contracting sector has stabilised, with 39% of contractor clients likely to slightly increase their contractor headcount over the next three months, and 52% predicting that contractor numbers will stay the same.
The picture for contractors deteriorates over the medium term, with 59% of clients predicting that their contractor headcounts will remain the same in 4-12 months time. Only 33% of clients forecast a slight increase.
REC’s survey also shows that, over the short term, clients with more than 200 employees are almost twice as likely to take on new contractors than smaller organisations having between 1-10 employees.
“Our monthly survey remains consistent in its predictions of ongoing growth in employment this year and into 2014,” notes REC chief executive Kevin Green on the latest survey findings. “Employers are sounding more optimistic than last year.”
The vast majority of clients continue to use contractors to manage peaks in demand, as well as to cover leave and reduce costs. However, a significant minority of clients also use contractors to manage uncertainty, respond to growth and to manage change.
Despite burgeoning skills shortages, future hiring intentions across most core contracting disciplines are flat or falling, with the financial sector performing particularly poorly. Even engineering, where contractor demand growth has been sustained throughout most of the economic downturn, experienced a marginal fall in predicted contractor hiring during June.
And the ‘temp to perm’ rate continued to rise for the fourth consecutive month, albeit at a slower pace, as contractors choose to make the transition back into permanent employment.
“Recovering from the recession may be taking longer than many would like, but progress on jobs continues to outperform the rest of the economy,” concludes Green.