Jobs for financial services IT contractors down by a third

Just when we suggest that things might be looking up for IT contractors in financial services, statistics (damn statistics) have gone and burst our bubble.

In fact, the number of contractor vacancies in banking and finance has fallen by nearly a third since the beginning of the year alone.

Figures from Contractor UK suggest that the number of contract roles advertised within the financial sector for the first quarter of this year fell to 6,721, from over 9,500 in December 2008.

It's not a massive surprise when you consider there's going to be a $40bn hole in retail banks' IT budgets globally alone, according to figures from Datamonitor and that the sector is cutting back on technology spend generally.

Within investment banking technology, stats from IT Jobs Watch suggest that the number of contractor roles available fell to 2,372 for the three months to April 2009, from 4,858 over the same period last year.

And rates have plummeted from an average of 30.06 an hour in April 2008 to 17.33 for the same period this year, says IT Jobs Watch.

Still, if there are some jobs out there, where are they?

Julia Bosworth, director of the contractor division of recruiters Project Partners, says: "There's a lot of work within investment banks around financial accounting systems where they're looking for project managers, programme managers but mostly business analysts. There's also a steady stream of integration positions as banks look to cut back on the number of disparate systems."

Headhunters tell us that the banks currently looking to recruit IT contractors include Lloyds TSB, Credit Suisse and HSBC.