JobStats - May 2002: 11 May 2002
11 May 2002
Welcome to the second edition of the JobStats newsletter (and the
first to be delivered by email to subscribers).
Market trends
Last month I said that I thought we had reached the bottom of
the market and that we could expect things not to get worse.
This month has tested that statement.
On the downside, the
number of job adverts continued to fall slightly (down four
percent since March).
On the upside, rates are beginning to show real signs of rising
again. Annual rates have stopped falling and at the top end
of the market they are rising. Hourly rates are also moving up
but the behaviour is different, the bottom end of the market
is showing the most consistent gains. Looking back to the end
of 1999, the general rise in rates over the following year
started with a rise at the bottom end of the market and the
subsequent fall was also preceded by a fall at the bottom end.
The demand for contractors has stopped declining and has levelled
off. The demand for permanent employees is still declining though
but at a slower rate than last year.
Other indicators
The IT sector is driven by the general economy because a lot of
IT jobs are for companies for whom IT is a service rather than
the core business. This means that the state of the economy as
a whole will affect the demand for IT staff. The past two years
have been driven by the dot-com bubble; this has exacerbated
the effect on IT staff. It was especially good on the way up
and especially bad on the way down. With luck though it should
have worked its way out of the system and we are back to business
as usual. For the state of the UK economy as a whole you're best
consulting your favourite economist instead of me but ...
inflation is low, unemployment is low, interest rates are low
and the economy is still growing.
There's a small ray of sunshine from silicon.com who report
(http://www.silicon.com/a52985) that IT directors are planning
to increase their budgets by around four percent in 2002. But
remember that IT directors don't call the shots, their budgets
can always be revised by the rest of the board.
The cloud to this silver lining though is the news of job cuts
in the IT sector. With IBM and Logica cutting headcount it's
clear that the computing industry is not out of the woods just yet.
Specific skills
Programming languages come and go. The three most popular just
now are C++, Java and Visual Basic (in that order). C++ has
declined slightly in popularity over the past two years but
nothing too significant. The roller-coaster has been Java which
shot up at the start of 2000 and then fell consistently until
the start of 2002 since when it has become a little more popular.
Visual Basic has been steadily but unspectacularly declining
in popularity throughout 2001/2002.
C# is starting to appear in adverts since making its first
significant appearance in May 2001 and has been growing slowly
ever since. It is still a minority interest, mentioned by less
than one percent of adverts, but worth keeping your eye on.
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