IT and finance contractors are doing particularly well out of the recovery of Scotland’s financial sector. Candidate availability continues to fall and recruiters can’t find enough suitably skilled contractors to fill vacancies, presenting opportunities to contractors elsewhere in the UK.
The Bank of Scotland Report on Jobs for October 2014 also shows that the oil and gas and video games sectors are performing well.
“The number of people appointed to jobs increased, as did starting salaries,” explains Bank of Scotland chief economist Donald MacRae. “A rise in vacancies confirmed business confidence remains high. The recovery in the Scottish economy looks set to continue into 2015.”
The recovery of the financial sector is remarkable. The finance and accounting category was seventh in the demand league table during August 2014. It moved up to sixth place during September.
Demand for finance contractors then increased sharply during October, as it “recorded a sharp and accelerated increase in temporary job vacancies that was the fastest in four months”. This has taken the category into third place behind nursing and medical care and IT & computing.
IT contractors have also done well in recent months, moving from third to being in second place in the demand league table for a second consecutive month in October. The fortunes of IT contractors correlate closely to financial sector performance, as clients in that sector are the second largest consumer of IT contractor services, after the software business.
Other core contracting sectors are also performing strongly. According to the report, the Bank of Scotland Labour Market Barometer, which provides a snapshot of overall conditions in Scotland’s labour market, “remained elevated by historical standards in October.”
MacRae continues: “October saw the Labour Market Barometer reach 65.0 - the fourth highest in the survey history – signalling further improvements in labour market conditions in Scotland.”
This was certainly true for IT, finance and engineering contractors and even for the interims, who have languished at the bottom of the demand table for months and even experience flat growth during September, the only category to do so.
This changed during October, when the executive and professional category rose to seventh place, ahead of secretarial and clerical.