Contractor demand growth reached new highs during July 2013. According to the latest Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC)/KPMG Report on Jobs, agency billings showed their strongest increase for 29 months.
“The jobs market continues to skyrocket with permanent employment and temporary placements at three and two year highs, and vacancy growth accelerating to a six year high,” notes REC’s chief executive Kevin Green.
“A combination of confidence returning to the UK economy and higher employer demand have contributed to this impressive set of figures.”
All core contracting disciplines were in positive growth territory. The impressive gains made last month by a surging construction sector were sustained during July, leaving the industry second in the demand league table.
Engineering has dropped from first to fourth place, with its demand growth easing slightly. Despite demand growth continuing to accelerate in IT and computing, it fell to sixth place, being outperformed by non-contracting nursing, blue collar and secretarial sector positions.
The remaining core contracting disciplines of executive/professional and accounting/financial continue to languish at the bottom of the demand growth league table, in seventh and eighth place respectively.
Despite their lowly positioning, demand growth for both sectors increased during July and is well into positive territory, potentially signalling improved hiring conditions within the UK’s financial sector and an increased use of interims.
Anecdotal feedback from recruiters highlights that there is a shortage of oil and gas workers, civil and structural and railways engineers, alongside construction white collar contractors, business analysts and developers across a range of languages.
Demand for contractors in the public sector has again increased, overtaking public sector demand for permanent workers, which reduced during July. Over the last six months, June was the only month showing growth in public sector permanent hiring, whereas contractors experienced positive demand in four out of the six months.
The pattern of demand suggests that public sector organisations are reducing permanent headcounts and using contractors to ensure that service delivery is maintained.