AWR has had minimal impact on contract market

Research by CWJobs.co.uk has found that AWR has had a minimal impact on temporary workers within the IT industry, despite initial concerns that employers would dramatically cut agency workers, or opt for using in house reserves.

Data from CWJobs has indicated a 20% increase in contract job postings in the last year, and 4% during Q3 and Q4 of 2011, the period in which the new legislation came in to force, suggesting a sustained need for these types of workers despite the introduction of AWR guidelines.

This has been reinforced by the Olympics’ impact on recruitment, with demand for IT contractors in the second quarter of 2012 seeing a 3% increase – indicating a shift towards contractors to fulfill short term projects to meet Olympic deadlines.

Recruiting temporary workers has many benefits for employers, including reduced overheads, and the ability to use staff as and when they are needed, in oppose to maintaining permanent members of staff on an annualised wage.

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Website Director of CWJobs, Richard Nott, stated, “With the economic downturn, temporary workers provide a far more cost effective way of staffing short-term projects, as demonstrated by the figures reported for the last quarter during the Olympic games. The sustained momentum of the contract market suggests that recruitment of these workers remains resilient, and it’s fair to predict that as the UK’s economic blight takes hold, we’re likely to see more companies, rather than less, take on contract workers.”