State of the Market

[sreed]

It's the way of a contractor, otherwise what is the difference between you and the employee sitting at the desk beside you?

Outside IR35 contractors come in, deliver a piece of work as part of a project because they have the knowledge and skill to do that, then they move on because the project is complete. Pretty much anything else should really be considered inside IR35.

I agree with that, to an extent.

My point about the market for contractors was more general - boiling it down to a flexible expert resource that a business can employ/hire without any long term commitment, training costs, upskilling, etc.

Outside, inside, even some FTCs I would argue can fall under that broad umbrella. I've done 'outside' contracts that might be inside or an FTC in a bigger co and inside contracts that would be outside in a smaller co. And personally, I don't really give a tulip about what it's called as long as it's not perm employment, I'm not tied to the client and I get paid what I need.

[WTFH]

Sure but lets be honest, how many contractors are currently "used" that way? it's a nice idea, but most don't want to work this way and most employers don't really want the temp resource to work that way either.

It's the way of a contractor, otherwise what is the difference between you and the employee sitting at the desk beside you?

Outside IR35 contractors come in, deliver a piece of work as part of a project because they have the knowledge and skill to do that, then they move on because the project is complete. Pretty much anything else should really be considered inside IR35.

[dsc]

[...]
The next 10 years will probably look different from the last 10, there’ll be winners and losers from the changes. Even so, the need for contractors won’t disappear, companies will always need flexible resources and experts who can hit the ground running, finish a task and then move on out.

Sure but lets be honest, how many contractors are currently "used" that way? it's a nice idea, but most don't want to work this way and most employers don't really want the temp resource to work that way either.

[Fraidycat]

The U.S Market looks like a feeding frenzy, the EU+UK market barely has a pulse.

The US is able to borrow/print almost £3 Trillion every year while raising interest rates to 5%+. Its the like the US economy is on stimulants and depressants at the same time.

Europe and the UK just get to raise interest rates. The UK borrows just £100 billion every year, which is paltry in comparison to the US. So our economy is mainly being depressed at the moment.

Its supposedly the US reserve currency status that lets the US get away with this debt/money printing scam.

[Bluenose]

that pandemic year graph, jayzuz.

[sreed]

The contract market can stay depressed longer than we can stay solvent (and sane)

Demand will return, at some point, every company that has a freeze will lift at same time and will want to hire contractors all at the same time.

We don't know when, but not looking like this year. Sometime in 2025 i would guess.

This is from the latest recruitment report (March 2024) which shows how the perm and temp hiring indices are moving, pretty much tracking each other.

With respect to pay growth it’s the same story, lowest since 2020 for temp billings and lowest in 3 years for perm.

There’s definitely a general downturn in hiring, affecting demand for all types of roles. As per the blurb, the sharpest fall in permie vacancies was in the ‘IT and computing’ sector and regionally in the south of England. That will probably be mirrored in temp roles and contracts as well.

[Fraidycat]

Things need to change though right? The work itself didn't just fall off a cliff, it will need doing eventually

The contract market can stay depressed longer than we can stay solvent (and sane)

Demand will return, at some point, every company that has a freeze will lift at same time and will want to hire contractors all at the same time.

We don't know when, but not looking like this year. Sometime in 2025 i would guess.

[Snooky]

Daily mail headline from today (DM has a paywall now, so i wont link it):
Are these the laziest WFH staff in Britain? HMRC civil servants are gardening, taking the dog for a walk and playing video games while 'at work'

It's almost as disgraceful as when I worked in offices full time - staff would regularly go out for a fag break, stand and chat by a coffee machine, make personal phone calls, even go for a walk at lunchtime! Nobody said anything, but I knew those lazy WFO staff couldn't be getting any actual work done in the hours between those brief leisure activities.

[sreed]

Getting to the end of April, and been looking since end of November last year.

had only a handful of calls, 2 interviews, 1 turned into an offer but I turned it down as the rate was just insulting.

What a dramatic change from being back to back with no gaps for the 10+ years previous.

Things need to change though right? The work itself didn't just fall off a cliff, it will need doing eventually

Perhaps. But it could be done with less people, different people, in a different way or somewhere else.

Things always evolve - couple of years of Covid turbocharged a huge amount of change in working practices, quickly followed by rapid development in end user facing AI tools, the application of which is still in very early stages.

The next 10 years will probably look different from the last 10, there’ll be winners and losers from the changes. Even so, the need for contractors won’t disappear, companies will always need flexible resources and experts who can hit the ground running, finish a task and then move on out.

[tsmith]

IT has been in slump for 20 months now, started middle of 2022. What industry is that linked in thread about, have they only started to really feel it now?

Thats to be expected from the 18 month delay from interest rates hikes to really hit the economy, but the IT contract market saw the effect after just 6 months.

Although 18 months ago interest rates were only 3%, so thats what the wider economy is feeling at the moment, just 3% interest rates, it might still require another six to nine months before the economy feels the full effect of 5% interest rates.

Getting to the end of April, and been looking since end of November last year.

had only a handful of calls, 2 interviews, 1 turned into an offer but I turned it down as the rate was just insulting.

What a dramatic change from being back to back with no gaps for the 10+ years previous.

Things need to change though right? The work itself didn't just fall off a cliff, it will need doing eventually

Dont see UK interest rates really making that much difference in the UK. Maybe in the USA which is where most of the innovation happens in IT.

Its the end of an era I believe. The amount of bespoke IT work the vast majority of companies need doing in house has been dropping for a good while and the number of candidates has exploded and theres about to be 3 generations of people in the industry - where back in the day it was one maybe 2 generations

With a supply and demand imbalance companies will just hire cheap perm or lower day rates to the point there wont be much point being a contractor. Which is already happening

• Generation X (circa 1965 to 1980)
• Millennial Generation (circa 1981 to 1996)
• Generation Z (circa 1997 to 2012)

SAAS industry growth is insane
"Since 2015, the SaaS industry grew from $31.4 billion to an estimated $1617.1 billion in 2022. That equates to over 5x growth in only seven years."

But again I believe that wont generate significant enough demand for a return to the state of the market in the UK as before with lots of contractors required.

Implementing big bespoke SAAS eg Salesforce will be done in the main cheap offshore locations if possible - with maybe a few onsite guys as contractors