IT Contractor barometer points to stormy weather

(By Richard Holway) Thanks to George O’Connor at Panmure Gordon from bringing the IT contractor market in recession article from ContractorUK to our attention.

The opening paragraphs read “The IT contracts market slipped into recession in Q3 following the overall trend of IT jobs growth contracting for two successive quarters. Demand for each freelance IT job, particularly developers, fell for the sixth month in a row, at a faster and steeper rate than recession in the permanent IT jobs market”.

As readers know, the ITSA market has always been one of the best barometers of the forward health of the whole IT services sector. It’s been pointing to storms ahead for most of 2008. In all previous periods of bad weather, it takes 1-2 years for this to work its way into the mainstream – ie where IT services companies and users start laying off permanent staff. That would indicate that 2009/2010 is going to be very rough out there. But I doubt that comes as too much of a surprise to any reader.