Contractor skills shortages and sharply falling candidate availability are keeping prospects buoyant. Growth in contractor demand has been sustained for 18 successive months and shows no sign of slowing.
This is according to October 2014’s Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC)/KPMG Report on Jobs, which also highlights that engineering and IT & computing occupy the second and fourth places respectively in the demand league tables.
“The good news about our jobs market continues,” highlights REC chief executive Kevin Green. “The number of vacancies is continuing to rise, with businesses in all sectors of the economy looking to hire more staff.”
However, Green goes on to warn that: “Ongoing candidate shortages are a major barrier to growth.”
ContractorCalculator CEO Dave Chaplin agrees, adding: “There is increasing evidence that contractor demand is being driven by clients covering talent gaps in their permanent workforce with contractors because they cannot hire employees with the right skills.
“This is contributing to an already buoyant contract market, but it is also worsening skills shortages particularly in the core contracting disciplines of engineering, IT, finance and interim management.”
Recruiters told the REC that they are experiencing difficulties in finding suitably skilled contractors in a number of areas. These included accounts and transactional finance, developers and IT security, plus engineers in general although there is a particular shortage in the nuclear and rail sectors.”
The Midlands is where the contract action is happening during the final quarter of 2014, as the region showed the highest level of contractor agency billings, as well as experiencing the fastest growth in permanent employee placements.
Despite the sustained demand and skills shortages, pay growth slowed during October. The Midlands experienced the fastest pay growth, which further suggests that it is the region contractors should be targeting for work.