State of the Market

[rocktronAMP]

Who the hell costs 1650pd?

Gulp £1650 per day.

How are they getting around the 53% tax above £100K to £125K because your personal allowance disappears? I am assuming Inside IR35 ...
But do these consultants get a small salary and then dividend from the business like us old Outside IR35 pre 2020 (ex-) contractors? Seriously a genuine question.

Also also how long are they typically get £1650 in a engagement? Surely they are not working the entire 12 months in a year. I wouldn't at that rate. Perhaps they have wifey (or hubby) and divorce and payments alimonies to die for.

[gables]

Gulp £1650 per day.

How are they getting around the 53% tax above £100K to £125K because your personal allowance disappears? I am assuming Inside IR35 ...
But do these consultants get a small salary and then dividend from the business like us old Outside IR35 pre 2020 (ex-) contractors? Seriously a genuine question.

Also also how long are they typically get £1650 in a engagement? Surely they are not working the entire 12 months in a year. I wouldn't at that rate. Perhaps they have wifey (or hubby) and divorce and payments alimonies to die for.

Well if they're inside IR35, I doubt there'll be any "getting around" anything and if they're outside IR35 I imagine they'll be operating as tax efficiently as possible.

Why wouldn't you work 12 months of the year? I'll take a guess though that a role at this rate might well be 1-2 days a week, giving you freedom to either pick up other similar roles or not. I'd happily do 220 days a year at this rate :-)

[The Green View]

4 months out now. That may not be as long as others have experienced but it's significant for me because this is the longest period out of contract in my whole career. That includes the pandemic and the recession of 2008. What makes it seem even worse is that it I'm not even getting calls or leads other than the occasional fishing type call where the agent is looking for leads. Problem seems existential & I'm not really sure where to go from here having tailored different versions of my CV to target different types of roles etc.

I don't have my age on my CV but I'm late 50s & I'm sure they can work that out from my education history. Wondering if this is now coming into play?

[TheDude]

4 months out now. That may not be as long as others have experienced but it's significant for me because this is the longest period out of contract in my whole career. That includes the pandemic and the recession of 2008. What makes it seem even worse is that it I'm not even getting calls or leads other than the occasional fishing type call where the agent is looking for leads. Problem seems existential & I'm not really sure where to go from here having tailored different versions of my CV to target different types of roles etc.

I don't have my age on my CV but I'm late 50s & I'm sure they can work that out from my education history. Wondering if this is now coming into play?

Quite possibly. What are your main skills?

I am 50 and have started culling roles from my CV. Nobody cares I used to write Ada 83 for Logica.

[The Green View]

Quite possibly. What are your main skills?

I am 50 and have started culling roles from my CV. Nobody cares I used to write Ada 83 for Logica.

I guess I'm what you would call a front end oriented full stack developer. Most recent roles have been Vue.JS and Angular with .Net Core on the backend. In response to some advice I was given here, I've bigged up the backend aspect as well as my experience with AWS/Azure but it's had little effect.

[bownyboy]

4 months out now. That may not be as long as others have experienced but it's significant for me because this is the longest period out of contract in my whole career. That includes the pandemic and the recession of 2008. What makes it seem even worse is that it I'm not even getting calls or leads other than the occasional fishing type call where the agent is looking for leads. Problem seems existential & I'm not really sure where to go from here having tailored different versions of my CV to target different types of roles etc.

I don't have my age on my CV but I'm late 50s & I'm sure they can work that out from my education history. Wondering if this is now coming into play?

I'm 50 too and I don't have education history on mine, or dates, or my age. I've also stripped out anything from more than 10 years ago

Instead my CV is formatted along the line of 'Assignments' with the duration of each contract next to them. I put them in the order that I think are most relevant for the roles I go for.

[Bluenose]

How are they getting around the 53% tax

They are not, see Spanish startup/nomad visa thread.

Also also how long are they typically get £1650 in a engagement?

Years and, that's the problem (for Public Sector to solve).

[SussexSeagull]

Been out since October but am at least getting calls now. As I have said previously the Christmas shutdown seems to start in early November now.

[rocktronAMP]

4 months out now. That may not be as long as others have experienced but it's significant for me because this is the longest period out of contract in my whole career. That includes the pandemic and the recession of 2008. What makes it seem even worse is that it I'm not even getting calls or leads other than the occasional fishing type call where the agent is looking for leads. Problem seems existential & I'm not really sure where to go from here having tailored different versions of my CV to target different types of roles etc.

I don't have my age on my CV but I'm late 50s & I'm sure they can work that out from my education history. Wondering if this is now coming into play?

Keep experimenting with your CV. Competition is more likely the thing. Although I have seen and reviewed badly format ones very recently.

Where are you in the country? I know many job ads expect hybrid working (e.g. 2 day in office / 3 days remote), but maybe it is me (lucky) I only have to go in very occasionally. The point is if you live in Newcastle then you might have difficulty getting hired for a contract role in Brighton, especially if it is definitely on-site. (I'd thought it was difficult to find talented engineers in the industry. Everyone, managers are constantly complaining about finding and hiring staff, most consultancies, because they are not paying enough that people will jump ship. People quite rightly resist working for cheap rates or lower than expected salaries or lack of remoteness. So stalemate)

I stopped contracting in 2021 after the first Inside IR35 debacle, because of the Off-Payroll Worker rules. You might also have to think about permanent opportunities from now, if you haven't yet. Could your family's budget last another 2 months? What does 6 months out of work look like to you? You will not make that lost income back very quicky the way the economy is heading. Decide now!

Meanwhile Udemy / Pluralsight is your friend. Brush up on your server side scripting skills (nodejs is still useful). A few Javascript / Interface contractors from way back 2013-2015 GOV.UK that I worked with, also had a hand in UI/UX design and whatever else was front-endy. Learn some cloud: AWS or Google Cloud Platform Essentials. Good luck. Often tragic despair immediately turns into raging delight. Keep your head up.

[The Green View]

Keep experimenting with your CV. Competition is more likely the thing. Although I have seen and reviewed badly format ones very recently.

Where are you in the country? I know many job ads expect hybrid working (e.g. 2 day in office / 3 days remote), but maybe it is me (lucky) I only have to go in very occasionally. The point is if you live in Newcastle then you might have difficulty getting hired for a contract role in Brighton, especially if it is definitely on-site. (I'd thought it was difficult to find talented engineers in the industry. Everyone, managers are constantly complaining about finding and hiring staff, most consultancies, because they are not paying enough that people will jump ship. People quite rightly resist working for cheap rates or lower than expected salaries or lack of remoteness. So stalemate)

I stopped contracting in 2021 after the first Inside IR35 debacle, because of the Off-Payroll Worker rules. You might also have to think about permanent opportunities from now, if you haven't yet. Could your family's budget last another 2 months? What does 6 months out of work look like to you? You will not make that lost income back very quicky the way the economy is heading. Decide now!

Meanwhile Udemy / Pluralsight is your friend. Brush up on your server side scripting skills (nodejs is still useful). A few Javascript / Interface contractors from way back 2013-2015 GOV.UK that I worked with, also had a hand in UI/UX design and whatever else was front-endy. Learn some cloud: AWS or Google Cloud Platform Essentials. Good luck. Often tragic despair immediately turns into raging delight. Keep your head up.

I'm near Kidderminster - Brum is an easy commute and have had roles in Cheltenham, Cheshire, Bristol in the past on a daily commute. In the past I'd go further afield and do the Mon-Fri thing but opportunities for this are fewer because of the number of roles inside IR35 which do not seem to pay sufficiently enough to compensate. 1 day a week with a night over I could probably take but the London inside roles wanting you onsite 3 days a week, forget it under the current regime.

As for permanent, it all depends on the role I guess Shouldn't write it off but I have a contractor's CV. I'd need to make it very clear that I'm done with contracting and be convincing. One line I was thinking of taking was to emphasise a successful contracting career but, for various reasons (especially my age) this lifestyle no longer works for me and I want to see out my career in a more secure working environment. Then again, mentioning age and the fact I only want to work for another 5 years is probably not such a good idea. Other than that, yes Pluralsight etc. Currently putting together a simple app with React, .Net 6 and AWS & trying to incorporate the equivalent features of Vue/Angular with which I'm familiar -Vuex, Ngrx Store etc.