IT job vacancies are on track to rise back to pre-recession levels, as first quarter data reveals that the volume of permanent vacancies has risen for the fourth year in a row.

The latest data from CWJobs.co.uk has shown that IT jobs are now only 15% below where they were, pre-recession, in Q1 2008, compared to 41% just three years ago. As Britain’s economic outlook finally shows signs of stabilising, it’s likely businesses are taking on additional staff as they anticipate expanding, or try to trigger growth.

Alongside the industry’s positive performance, maintaining steady growth is SQL, which has remained the most in demand skill over the last five years. In the last year however, new data shows that demand for C# has overtaken C as a desired skill for employees, as employers look beyond the older programming language.

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Software	Quarter 1/2013	Quarter 1/2012	Quarter 1/2011	Quarter 1/2010	Quarter 1/2009	Quarter 1/2008
SQL	20,142	21,143	19,896	17,956	18,259	28,062
C#	14,073	13,629	12,303	10,223	10,353	15,414
C	13,661	15,794	14,932	13,426	14,401	21,675
.NET	12,932	12,354	11,226	8,745	9,962	14,702
JAVA	10,300	9,372	8,324	6,452	6,892	15,435
ASP	8,918	8,359	8,187	7,338	8,803	11,785
SQL SERVER	8,788	9,069	8,369	8,087	8,532	13,488
JAVASCRIPT	7,065	6,985	6,094	4,815	5,915	5,510
AGILE	6,735	6,243	5,193	0	0	0
HTML	6,724	6,403	6,037	5,007	6,484	6,792

As a continued result of business outsourcing functions and consumer technology development, software houses and consultancies lead the way in industry growth with vacancy rises of over 1.4% last year.

Other sectors are also showing signs of steady growth, such as finance and retail, have increased 0.7% and 1.1% respectively. The only area showing less sign of prosperity is the public sector, as permanent roles decreased 0.4%.

Richard Nott, Website Director, CWJobs, says: “As Britain’s economic position stabilises, growth is being seen across most sectors of the IT industry, signalling that it is finally recovering from the recession. The technology industry looks to be at the forefront of Britain’s growth, and if it maintains the same trajectory, could be boosting Britain’s economic position even further.”