The first table below looks at the demand for COBOL skills in IT contracts advertised for the Manchester region. Included is a guide to the average contractor rates offered in IT contracts that have cited COBOL over the 3 months to 22 May 2013 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years. The second table is for comparison and provides aggregates for all of the Programming Languages category for the Manchester region.

Note that daily contractor rates and hourly contractor rates are treated separately. When calculating average contractor rates, daily rates are not derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Location
3 months to
22 May 2013
Same period 2012 Same period 2011
COBOL
Rank 73 87 66
Rank change year-on-year
+14 -21
Contract jobs citing COBOL 2 1 3
As % of all contract IT jobs located in Manchester 0.212% 0.076% 0.293%
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.602% 0.206% 0.965%
Number of daily rates quoted 0 0 3
Average daily rate - - £250
UK excluding London average daily rate £325 £320 £310
% change year-on-year
+1.56% +3.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 0
Average hourly rate - - -
UK excluding London average hourly rate £20.98 - -
All Programming Languages
Manchester
Contract IT job ads with a match in the
Programming Languages category
332 485 311
As % of all contract IT jobs located in Manchester 35.24% 36.94% 30.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 165 284 177
Average daily rate £290 £300 £275
Average daily rate % change year-on-year
-3.33% +9.09%
90% offered a daily rate of more than £213 £225 £150
10% offered a daily rate of more than £370 £400 £440
UK excluding London average daily rate £325 £325 £325
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 31 15
Average hourly rate £27.75 £30.00 £25.00
Average hourly rate % change year-on-year
-7.50% +20.00%
90% offered a hourly rate of more than £13.58 £14.84 £11.25
10% offered a hourly rate of more than £126.90 £37.90 £35.75
UK excluding London average hourly rate £35.00 £34.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year
+2.94% -2.85%
COBOL
North West

COBOL
Jobs Demand Trend

This chart provides a 3-month moving total of IT contractor jobs citing COBOL across the Manchester region as a proportion of the total demand within the Programming Languages category.

Manchester COBOL Jobs Demand Trend

COBOL
Daily Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for daily rates quoted in IT contract jobs citing COBOL across the Manchester region.

Manchester COBOL Daily Rate Trend

COBOL
Hourly Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for hourly rates quoted in IT contractor jobs citing COBOL across the Manchester region.

Manchester COBOL Hourly Rate Trend

COBOL
Top 30 Related IT Skills

For the 6 months to 22 May 2013, IT contractor jobs across the Manchester region citing COBOL also mentioned the following IT skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the number of jobs and their proportion against the total number of contract IT job ads sampled that cited COBOL.

1 4 (80.00%) Mainframe
2 3 (60.00%) Banking
2 3 (60.00%) VSAM
2 3 (60.00%) CICS
3 2 (40.00%) CA
3 2 (40.00%) Cisco
3 2 (40.00%) SQL
3 2 (40.00%) Oracle
3 2 (40.00%) zOS
3 2 (40.00%) CheckPoint
3 2 (40.00%) Firewall
4 1 (20.00%) Waterfall
4 1 (20.00%) Root Cause Analysis
4 1 (20.00%) Data Management
4 1 (20.00%) Software Testing
4 1 (20.00%) PKI
4 1 (20.00%) Brocade
4 1 (20.00%) ISPF
4 1 (20.00%) WebSphere
4 1 (20.00%) CMDB
4 1 (20.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (20.00%) Windows Server 2008
4 1 (20.00%) Hyper-V
4 1 (20.00%) Visualisation
4 1 (20.00%) HP Quality Center
4 1 (20.00%) Back Office
4 1 (20.00%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (20.00%) Foglight
4 1 (20.00%) Finance
4 1 (20.00%) Validation

COBOL
Top Related IT Skills by Category

For the 6 months to 22 May 2013, IT contractor jobs across the Manchester region citing COBOL also mentioned the following IT skills grouped by category. The figures indicate the number of jobs and their proportion against the total number of contract IT job ads sampled that cited COBOL. Up to 20 skills are shown per category.

Application Development
1 1 (20.00%) ISPF
1 1 (20.00%) WebSphere
1 1 (20.00%) Middleware
Application Platforms
1 3 (60.00%) CICS
2 1 (20.00%) WebLogic
Business Applications
1 1 (20.00%) Oracle EBS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (40.00%) Firewall
2 1 (20.00%) CTI
2 1 (20.00%) VoIP
2 1 (20.00%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (20.00%) SQL Server
1 1 (20.00%) Data Warehouse
1 1 (20.00%) RDBMS
General
1 3 (60.00%) Banking
2 1 (20.00%) Back Office
2 1 (20.00%) Finance
Job Titles
1 2 (40.00%) Technical Design Leader
2 1 (20.00%) Developer
2 1 (20.00%) Development Manager
2 1 (20.00%) Lead Developer
2 1 (20.00%) Software Manager
2 1 (20.00%) Test Leader
2 1 (20.00%) Software Development Manager
Miscellaneous
1 4 (80.00%) Mainframe
2 3 (60.00%) VSAM
3 1 (20.00%) PKI
3 1 (20.00%) CMDB
3 1 (20.00%) Visualisation
3 1 (20.00%) IVR
Operating Systems
1 2 (40.00%) zOS
2 1 (20.00%) Windows Server 2008
2 1 (20.00%) Windows Server 2003
2 1 (20.00%) Windows
2 1 (20.00%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1 (20.00%) Waterfall
1 1 (20.00%) Root Cause Analysis
1 1 (20.00%) Data Management
1 1 (20.00%) Software Testing
1 1 (20.00%) Validation
1 1 (20.00%) Configuration Management
1 1 (20.00%) PRINCE2
1 1 (20.00%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 2 (40.00%) SQL
2 1 (20.00%) JCL
2 1 (20.00%) C
2 1 (20.00%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 1 (20.00%) ISEB
System Software
1 1 (20.00%) VMware Infrastructure
1 1 (20.00%) Hyper-V
1 1 (20.00%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
1 1 (20.00%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 1 (20.00%) HP Quality Center
1 1 (20.00%) Foglight
1 1 (20.00%) NetBackup
1 1 (20.00%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 2 (40.00%) CA
1 2 (40.00%) Cisco
1 2 (40.00%) Oracle
1 2 (40.00%) CheckPoint
2 1 (20.00%) Brocade
2 1 (20.00%) VMware
2 1 (20.00%) Unisys
2 1 (20.00%) IBM
2 1 (20.00%) HP
2 1 (20.00%) Citrix
2 1 (20.00%) Nokia