State of the Market

[BigDataPro]

Is it any wonder rates are on their arse? £ 300 a day inside IR35 is a massive amount of money to those applicants. All shacked up in a rented property to minimise costs, sending the balance home.

It is not a massive money anymore. I was in India during Jan, Feb and March. The prices are sky high i.e equivalent to the UK.

[Snooky]

It is not a massive money anymore. I was in India during Jan, Feb and March. The prices are sky high i.e equivalent to the UK.

Agreed. India has had such consistent year-on-year growth over the last few decades ( > 5% GDP growth for most of the last 30 years ) that their cost of living is now far higher so they no longer have the benefit of the stark cost differential that originally allowed them to offer significant cost savings for outsourcing by richer economies.

[dsc]

It is not a massive money anymore. I was in India during Jan, Feb and March. The prices are sky high i.e equivalent to the UK.

It's not bugger all though, most likely not enough to send money back to India (and if they bring their family, there's less reason to send anything back), but if you co-rent and live in a cheaper area, you can save a fair amount or at least live comfortably. To people used to £1000 a day and a life style that goes with it, £300 is pittance of course.

Of course I don't know the culture and perhaps to young people in India, UK is a tulip hole and this whole visa scheme will go up in smoke soon.

[sreed]

The median monthly salary in India is £270. The equivalent in the UK is £2,250. If the cost of living in India is the same as the UK (it isn’t) then it must be a terrible place with that kind of median income.

Don’t kid yourself, millions of young Indians (and other south Asians) will give an arm and leg to work in the UK (or other developed western countries).

And don’t forget, their population is in excess of 1.4 billion, so not everyone needs to think of the UK as an attractive place. Even a few tens of millions is but a fraction of their population.

[Bluenose]

Things have gotten to the point where I'm entertaining crackly phone calls from Indian call centres (not sure why - they never go anywhere interesting but I live in hope)

I thought I would pop in and give an update.

The burner phone has not gone off in two months but that was ok because...

I secured two roles at the beginning of September with a start date of mid-October. I had to endue all sorts of crap and noise to get them.

I took them both on as I did not want to risk one of them burning down at the last minute.

Both of them were rug-pulled and none of them were really sorry about it neither. I was not the only person affected by these project cancellations.

From talking to other contractor people I know and also, looking on linked-in, we are off the bottom of the bear market but the level of 'dodgyness' and skull-duggery remains at epic levels.

In times like these, its important to make sure you ask questions in the end-client interview about things like purchase orders, budget and overall financing for your role. You can't stop people down the supply chain from lying to you (they will or, will at least be ignorant about it) but not everyone at the end-client will lie.

I thought I would add that the Indian based recruiters are still very quiet and I am seeing quite a few of those that were working in these tele-recruitment roles moved on to other companies on linked-in.

I still think, that the TCS scandal has had a big ripple effect and has killed these micro-agencies off and that's why the usual suspects (see Indian based recruiter operating in the U.K thread) are not calling you like they used to.

[BigDataPro]

The median monthly salary in India is £270. The equivalent in the UK is £2,250. If the cost of living in India is the same as the UK (it isn’t) then it must be a terrible place with that kind of median income.

Don’t kid yourself, millions of young Indians (and other south Asians) will give an arm and leg to work in the UK (or other developed western countries).

And don’t forget, their population is in excess of 1.4 billion, so not everyone needs to think of the UK as an attractive place. Even a few tens of millions is but a fraction of their population.

Given we are talking about IT sector, you should narrow down your search.

[dsc]

Given we are talking about IT sector, you should narrow down your search.

what's with the double decimal points ?

[supersteamer]

what's with the double decimal points ?

Lakh - Wikipedia

[BigDataPro]

what's with the double decimal points ?

They are commas, not decimals. Here is an example from right to left:

11,92,750

0 - One
5 - Ten
7 - Hundred
2 - Thousand
9 - Ten Thousand
1 - Lakh / Lac
1 - Crore
(then)
Ten Crore
Hundred Crore etc

[sreed]

Given we are talking about IT sector, you should narrow down your search.

I don't know what the squiggly lines mean, and the commas/decimals seem to be in the wrong places, but still looks like 1/3-1/4 of UK tech salaries. Along with their population of many tens of millions of "techies" (even a fraction of that is enough to flood the UK labour market), that's plenty of salary-deflation to export to the West.

It's already pretty bad, even before the India trade-and-visas deal, with all the people coming over as students, their dependents, unskilled visas and their dependents, "skilled" work visas and their dependents, etc. It's going to be even worse if Rishi further liberalises the visa-regime for Indians.

You might be in the camp that believes that none of this impacts the job market, salaries and contract rates in the UK, but I definitely don't believe that.

Here's an Indian newspaper boasting about how easy it is to get a UK visa and the huge number of Indians (relatively speaking ofc, tiny number for India, huge number for us) applying to move to the UK
https://m.economictimes.com/nri/migr...w/98325352.cms