ISPF Contract Job Trends in the North of England

IBM Interactive System Productivity Facility (ISPF)
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring ISPF skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 25 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 187 163 187
Rank change year-on-year -24 +24 +56
Contract jobs citing ISPF 8 1 3
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 0.19% 0.025% 0.060%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 0.86% 0.15% 0.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 6 1 3
10th Percentile £280 - £483
25th Percentile £302 £463 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £313 £475 £575
Median % change year-on-year -34.11% -17.39% +25.68%
75th Percentile £347 £488 £594
90th Percentile £417 - £598
England median daily rate £313 £478 £575
% change year-on-year -34.45% -16.96% +10.84%

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
North of England

ISPF falls under the Software Libraries and Frameworks category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills in the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 935 680 1,081
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 21.74% 17.00% 21.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 676 433 824
10th Percentile £345 £350 £375
25th Percentile £400 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £618
90th Percentile £675 £650 £675
England median daily rate £510 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -7.27% - -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 12 37
10th Percentile £28.80 £27.45 £45.88
25th Percentile £40.88 £43.64 -
Median hourly rate £67.25 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +45.63% - -36.52%
75th Percentile £74.26 £65.69 £62.00
90th Percentile £81.16 £74.20 £69.25
England median hourly rate £54.70 £65.00 £55.56
% change year-on-year -15.85% +16.99% -14.52%

ISPF
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing ISPF relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

ISPF job vacancy trend in the North of England

ISPF
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing ISPF.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing ISPF

ISPF
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing ISPF in the North of England over the 6 months to 25 October 2025.

Daily rate histogram for ISPF in the North of England

ISPF
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing ISPF.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing ISPF

ISPF
Contract Job Locations in the North of England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing ISPF within the North of England region over the 6 months to 25 October 2025. 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
North West - 6 £313 - 4
Yorkshire -21 2 - -
ISPF
England

ISPF
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England 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 7 (87.50%) CICS
2 1 (12.50%) SAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1 (12.50%) DB2
General
1 2 (25.00%) Banking
2 1 (12.50%) Analytical Skills
2 1 (12.50%) Finance
2 1 (12.50%) Financial Institution
2 1 (12.50%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 6 (75.00%) Platform Engineer
2 2 (25.00%) Programmer
2 2 (25.00%) Systems Programmer
2 2 (25.00%) z/OS Systems Programmer
Miscellaneous
1 8 (100.00%) Mainframe
2 6 (75.00%) VSAM
3 5 (62.50%) IBM Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 8 (100.00%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (75.00%) DevOps
1 6 (75.00%) Platform Engineering
1 6 (75.00%) Problem Management
1 6 (75.00%) SDLC
2 5 (62.50%) Continuous Improvement
2 5 (62.50%) Release Management
3 4 (50.00%) Configuration Management
3 4 (50.00%) Knowledge Transfer
4 2 (25.00%) Incident Management
5 1 (12.50%) Batch Processing
5 1 (12.50%) Change Control
5 1 (12.50%) Compliance Audit
5 1 (12.50%) Disaster Recovery
5 1 (12.50%) High Availability
5 1 (12.50%) ITIL
5 1 (12.50%) Migration
5 1 (12.50%) Performance Monitoring
5 1 (12.50%) Performance Tuning
5 1 (12.50%) Risk Management
5 1 (12.50%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 8 (100.00%) JCL
2 7 (87.50%) CLIST
2 7 (87.50%) REXX
3 2 (25.00%) COBOL
4 1 (12.50%) Assembly Language
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (12.50%) GDPR
1 1 (12.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 8 (100.00%) Time Sharing Option
2 1 (12.50%) Job Entry Subsystem
2 1 (12.50%) RACF
Systems Management
1 7 (87.50%) OMEGAMON
2 5 (62.50%) CA Endevor
Vendors
1 7 (87.50%) IBM
2 1 (12.50%) Microsoft