State of the market

[theroyale]

At least that's paying up to £350.

I was offered my old contract at Barclays back, 18 months ago. The rate had mysteriously dropped in the six months I'd been away from £550 to £180. How me and their new Indian "Recruitment Consultancy" laughed over that one. Or maybe it was just me, I can't quite remember...

An Asian I knew on a tier-1 visa was working a programmer analyst role for Citibank for £145 a day. This was through a "recruitment consultant" of course - this guy estimated that the consultancy was making at least another £145pd if not more off him.

With the closure of the Tier-1 visa to new applicants we'll hopefully start seeing this sort of thing tapering off. Honestly I don't mind so much a dip in contracting rates if its a genuine reaction to market conditions, but some subcontracting c*** setting up shop and selling his contracts to desperate tier-1 visa holders at rock-bottom rates...

[Robinho]

This weeks been quite strong for me.

[lightng]

Boomed

Just got a 3 monther twenty miles from home after being two years in permiedom. That's in the grim north-west too.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Just got a 3 monther twenty miles from home after being two years in permiedom. That's in the grim north-west too.

Well done

I hope I can find one in the North West soon. First 3 gigs all been a fair bit from home.

[PropertyCrashUK]

I think it depends on your skillset, I've been doing .Net and have jumped from one short term contract to another, the last real gap I had was Christmas 2007

But I have noticed less contracts out there and depressed rates, and I moved to London thinking the contract market always recovers here first

I imagine oop north it's grim right now

Where were you before moving to London - oop North?

Can you tell us some more about London? I would have thought there was plenty of work around? Isn't that so?

Wales is dire - just dire.

The main page news has an article a few weeks back from some report stating that there will be a need for 100,000 extrat IT people in the UK this year. Now today an article says that the banks are not hiring IT contractors... but the main work in my line appears to be only in the banks in Canary Wharf.

[amcdonald]

Where were you before moving to London - oop North?

Can you tell us some more about London? I would have thought there was plenty of work around? Isn't that so?

Wales is dire - just dire.

The main page news has an article a few weeks back from some report stating that there will be a need for 100,000 extrat IT people in the UK this year. Now today an article says that the banks are not hiring IT contractors... but the main work in my line appears to be only in the banks in Canary Wharf.

I was down in deepest Dorset oh aaaaaaar, theres work down there but too many people chasing. London has seemed ok, the only bench time I've had is when the current client shut for christmas and despite taking my jobserve cv down last summer I'm still getting hassled repeatedly by dodgy agents for London contracts.

I've never worked for banks, I just jumped into a cushy public sector contract last summer which is still going to rumble on for a little longer. I'm so bored I've been developing Android apps to make the time more bearable

[PropertyCrashUK]

Thanks.

Is the public sector contractor local authority or govt dept - just wondering who is still using contractors in the PS.

[amcdonald]

Thanks.

Is the public sector contractor local authority or govt dept - just wondering who is still using contractors in the PS.

It's a Uni, they had a wave of redundancies, someone left before finding out whether they still had a job. They were actually needed, so the IT bosses panicked and got a contractor in, as it's always a different budget it should be happening elsewhere it just won't create huge numbers of contracts though

[Wanderer]

I was down in deepest Dorset oh aaaaaaar, theres work down there but too many people chasing. London has seemed ok, the only bench time I've had is when the current client shut for christmas and despite taking my jobserve cv down last summer I'm still getting hassled repeatedly by dodgy agents for London contracts.

I always get a pre-pay burner sim for the mobile and a throw away email address then dump them when I've got a nice stable contract. Once your details are out there and you are getting spammed/canvassed, you can't put that genie back in the bottle.

[wantacontract]

Another day gone on the bench....