IT Jobs Watch, Tracking the IT Job Market

About us

IT Jobs Watch provides a unique perspective on today's information technology job market. Our aim is to present a concise and accurate map of the prevailing UK IT job market conditions.

Our goals include helping you:

• Determine the level of demand for certain IT skills with a guide to the average salary and contractor rates offered
• Discover how various IT skills interrelate
• Determine the IT skills needed by certain Job Titles
• Determine which IT skills are popular within specific regions and locations

We operate independently to assure you an impartial outlook.

Using this site

The homepage presents permanent IT job skills/job titles ordered by Rank¹ over the past 3 months to the date shown in the footer below. You can inspect this information by selecting a category and location and by ordering columns by clicking column headings.

Click the description links to view more in-depth information including historical trends dating back to 2004. For the type of information available see the section below.

¹Rank is a measure of relative demand and is calculated per region/area/location across all categories.

What information is available?

Related IT Skills for example: Web Developer Related Skills	Regional Demand Trends for example: jQuery Demand Trend in London	Regional Salary Trends for example: ASP.NET Developer London Salary Trend	Regional Related IT Skills for example: Java Related Skills in London
Salary Trends for example: PHP Developer	Salary Histograms for example: SharePoint Developer Salary Histogram	Contractor Daily Rate Trends for example: SAP Consultant Daily Rate Trend	Contractor Daily Rate Histograms for example: Adobe Flex Daily Rate Histogram
Demand Trends for example: Silverlight Demand Trend	Job Locations for example: SAP Job Locations	Contractor Hourly Rate Trends for example: Support Engineer Hourly Rate Trend	Contractor Hourly Rate Histograms for example: Test Analyst Hourly Rate Histogram

Average salary calculations

Average salaries (and average contractor rates) are based on the median or 50th percentile.

Most salary distributions tend to be positively skewed, with a larger number of lower salaries and a small number of high salaries. Very high or low salaries compared to the rest of the market are called outliers. Average salaries based on the mean are adversely affected by these outliers. Outliers that are high tend to drive the mean upward. Similarly, very low outliers tend to drive the mean downward.

The median is not affected by outliers and as such provides a more representative market average for salaries.

To provide perspective on the scope and distribution of salaries, the salary trend charts include two standard ranges around the median:

1. The 25th to 75th percentile range (or interquartile range) represents the middle 50% of salaries closest to the median. The interquartile range excludes the lowest 25% and highest 25% of salaries.

2. The 10th to 90th percentile range (or interdecile range) represents 80% of salaries closest to the median. The interdecile range excludes the lowest 10% and highest 10% of salaries.