Retail Contract Job Trends in Manchester

Retailing
North West > Manchester

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Retail in contract job vacancies in Manchester. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Retail over the 6 months leading up to 2 February 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 62 68
Rank change year-on-year -13 +6 +1
Contract jobs citing Retail 20 21 37
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 1.61% 2.03% 2.27%
As % of the General category 2.77% 3.32% 4.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 14 30
10th Percentile £505 £334 £126
25th Percentile £559 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £600 £488 £550
Median % change year-on-year +23.08% -11.36% +15.79%
75th Percentile £625 £609 £625
90th Percentile £738 £638 £738
North West median daily rate £525 £450 £550
% change year-on-year +16.67% -18.18% +15.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £18.50 - -
Median hourly rate £19.00 - -
75th Percentile £19.50 - -
90th Percentile - - -
North West median hourly rate £19.00 £25.32 £13.00
% change year-on-year -24.95% +94.73% -21.52%

All General Skills
Manchester

Retail falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring general skills in Manchester.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 721 632 834
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 57.96% 61.00% 51.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 505 370 563
10th Percentile £300 £264 £256
25th Percentile £367 £375 £377
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £461 £480
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -3.91% -1.03%
75th Percentile £550 £558 £588
90th Percentile £625 £675 £675
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +3.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 30 55
10th Percentile £15.80 £15.81 £12.10
25th Percentile £18.38 £22.00 £13.07
Median hourly rate £23.00 £32.50 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -29.23% +83.41% -31.85%
75th Percentile £47.50 £33.75 £28.25
90th Percentile £64.75 £60.00 £49.60
North West median hourly rate £29.60 £27.50 £19.25
% change year-on-year +7.64% +42.86% -14.44%

Retail
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Retail relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester.

Retail job vacancy trend in Manchester

Retail
Daily Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Retail.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Retail

Retail
Daily Rate Histogram in Manchester

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Retail in Manchester over the 6 months to 2 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Retail in Manchester

Retail
Hourly Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Retail.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Retail

Retail
Contract Job Locations in Manchester

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Retail within the Manchester region over the 6 months to 2 February 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Salford - 3 £663 - 1
Retail
North West

Retail
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 2 (10.00%) Microsoft Exchange
1 2 (10.00%) SharePoint
2 1 (5.00%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (5.00%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (5.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (5.00%) BambooHR
1 1 (5.00%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 2 (10.00%) Azure
1 2 (10.00%) Cloud Computing
1 2 (10.00%) Entra ID
1 2 (10.00%) Microsoft 365
1 2 (10.00%) OneDrive
1 2 (10.00%) PaaS
1 2 (10.00%) SaaS
2 1 (5.00%) Dataform
2 1 (5.00%) GCP
2 1 (5.00%) SuccessFactors
2 1 (5.00%) Vertex AI
Communications & Networking
1 2 (10.00%) NFC
1 2 (10.00%) RFID
1 2 (10.00%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (5.00%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 1 (5.00%) Atlassian Bamboo
1 1 (5.00%) JIRA
General
1 7 (35.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (10.00%) Finance
3 1 (5.00%) Influencing Skills
3 1 (5.00%) Marketing
3 1 (5.00%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 7 (35.00%) Architect
2 6 (30.00%) Service Management Architect
3 4 (20.00%) Enterprise Architect
4 3 (15.00%) E-Commerce Manager
4 3 (15.00%) Lead
5 2 (10.00%) Administrator
5 2 (10.00%) Digital Project Manager
5 2 (10.00%) E-Commerce Project Manager
5 2 (10.00%) IT Architect
5 2 (10.00%) ITSM Architect
5 2 (10.00%) Microsoft 365 Administrator
5 2 (10.00%) Principal Engineer
5 2 (10.00%) Principal Software Engineer
5 2 (10.00%) Project Manager
5 2 (10.00%) Senior
5 2 (10.00%) Senior Digital Project Manager
5 2 (10.00%) Senior E-Commerce Manager
5 2 (10.00%) Senior Manager
5 2 (10.00%) Senior Project Manager
5 2 (10.00%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (10.00%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 5 (25.00%) CMDB
2 4 (20.00%) Product Ownership
3 3 (15.00%) Taxonomies
4 2 (10.00%) Data Centre
4 2 (10.00%) Data Structures
4 2 (10.00%) Driving Licence
4 2 (10.00%) IoT
4 2 (10.00%) Onboarding
5 1 (5.00%) Cloud Native
5 1 (5.00%) EPoS
5 1 (5.00%) Management Information System
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (40.00%) Stakeholder Management
2 6 (30.00%) Service Management
3 5 (25.00%) Agile
3 5 (25.00%) Data Modelling
3 5 (25.00%) Enterprise Architecture
3 5 (25.00%) ITSM
4 4 (20.00%) B2C
4 4 (20.00%) E-Commerce
5 3 (15.00%) Architecture Governance
5 3 (15.00%) Configuration Management
5 3 (15.00%) Decision-Making
5 3 (15.00%) Integration Patterns
5 3 (15.00%) ITIL
5 3 (15.00%) Roadmaps
5 3 (15.00%) Stakeholder Engagement
6 2 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
6 2 (10.00%) Observability
6 2 (10.00%) Software Engineering
6 2 (10.00%) Supplier Management
6 2 (10.00%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 2 (10.00%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 2 (10.00%) Microsoft Certification
2 1 (5.00%) Degree
2 1 (5.00%) IIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (15.00%) Data Quality
2 2 (10.00%) GDPR
2 2 (10.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (5.00%) QA
System Software
1 2 (10.00%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 2 (10.00%) SCCM
Vendors
1 4 (20.00%) BMC
2 3 (15.00%) Microsoft
2 3 (15.00%) ServiceNow
3 2 (10.00%) Dynatrace
3 2 (10.00%) SolarWinds
4 1 (5.00%) Google
4 1 (5.00%) Salesforce
4 1 (5.00%) Workday