IT jobs show explosive growth during Q1 2004

The IT recruitment market is looking at a busy year according to the latest statistics from the CWJobs/SSL Quarterly IT Skills Index. With both permanent and contract advertised IT vacancies continuing to grow, it looks like the industry is well into a full recovery. Permanent IT vacancies have increased by 26% and contractor jobs by 23% between January and March 2004. This is great news for the industry as growth is expected to continue into 2004.

Key findings include:

Both Inner London and West & Wales saw an increase of over 30% in permanent and contractor IT vacancies

Inner London has seen a massive growth in IT job vacancies since Q1 2003 ñ permanent vacancies up by 68% and contract by 124%

All regions have seen an increase in permanent jobs in Q1 2004

West & Wales has had a positive Q1 2004 with an increase of over 32% for both permanent and contract vacancies

Only the East Midlands has seen a decline in contract vacancies with a 4% fall

Despite suffering a bad year in 2003, things are looking up in the Northwest region with an increase of 26% in permanent job vacancies and 14% in contract

SQL, Unix and C were the most popular skills for permanent IT staff in Q1 2004

Office, SQL and Oracle headed the list for IT contractors

Overall, things are looking up for the IT job market as the number of vacancies increased dramatically across the UK. The total number of permanent vacancies advertised between January and March 2004 was 51,469, 94% of which were advertised online. This is 25% greater than those advertised between October and December 2003. All regions have seen a significant increase in permanent vacancies with West and Wales seeing the largest at 33%, Inner London in second place with 32%, and the East Midlands and North East following at 31%.

The West Midlands saw the biggest increase in demand for IT contactors between January and March 2004 with a rise of 37% followed by West & Wales with a 32% increase. The only area to suffer a decline was the East Midlands, seeing a drop of 4% in contractor roles. The total number of contractor jobs advertised across the UK over the last twelve months has continued to rise with vacancies increasing by 37%.

From an industry point of view, the Retail & Distribution sector had the biggest increase in contractor vacancies, with an increase of 38% between January and March 2004. This was followed closely by Software Houses/Consultancies at 34% and Finance at 32%. Permanent IT vacancies in the Public Sector rose by 37% followed by Electronics/Communications at 30% and Software Houses/Consultancies at 29%. Although Manufacturing is still the only sector suffering a decline of 1% in both contract and permanent vacancies; they have seen an improvement on Q3 when vacancies had dropped by 40%.

Commenting on the latest findings, Richard Nott, Sales Director at CWJobs said:

îWe havenít seen such a dramatic increase in vacancy numbers for some time and itís a sure sign that the market is well and truly on its way to recovery. CWJobs has seen recruiters becoming increasingly confident and we have witnessed growth in both IT contract and permanent vacancies. This is really promising news with demand in all regions and all sectors and provides us with a very hopeful outlook for the rest of this year.î