Is there an increasing demand for contractors? Your views...

[Nicely Nicely]

It's been an interesting few months here - we're not the only accountancy firm to have noticed that there's been a recent increase in the number of first time contractors.

Probably cheap, scared, redundant permies replacing expensive, experienced contractors.

Many large corps are undertaking internal restructuring (inevitably leading to redundancies), but there also appears to be an upturn in PM recruitment (IT Jobs Watch shows it's up 30% versus last year).

ClientCo is a large engineering firm. They are making redundancies including in project management.

BTW, bugger all + 30% = bugger all.

Is your clientco restructuring and/or making permies redundant? What about contract hires? Are you seeing new investment in projects? How do you see 2010 panning out for contractors?

Redundant. None. No, it was cut back by 28%. tulipe.

[Not So Wise]

Probably cheap, scared, redundant permies replacing expensive, experienced contractors.

This ^^

The market can be summarized as follows

Roles offered, on the up, rates are still low

Until the backlog (out of work contractors and “temping permies” calling themselves contractors) is reduced, rates will not increase by much