Demand for new IT professionals plummets

But jobseekers should “brush up and excel” on skills that are hard to find, says e-skills

Despite the rising tide of redundancies across all sectors, the number of IT staff in employment is at its highest level for more than seven years, according to a report by sector skills council e-skills UK.

But the situation for IT professionals looking for a job is bleak, as demand for new staff continues to fall, according to the report, which claims the number of permanent and contract job ads fell by 24 per cent and 27 per cent respectively over the last two quarters of 2008.

According to e-skills, the largest decline in permanent IT job advertisements was for database-related positions. Other areas have also seen a drop in recruitment, such as systems design (down 33 per cent), internet-based positions (down 29 per cent), PC support (down 27 per cent) and operations (down 27 per cent).

Contractors were also hit hard, as vacancies available for freelance IT staff declined across all areas of expertise. The largest decline in demand was seen in programming (down 32 per cent), system design (down 31 per cent), software engineering (down 29 per cent) and systems development (down 27 per cent).

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-Ken