COBOL Contract Job Trends in the North West

COBOL
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring COBOL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 7 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 136 115 -
Rank change year-on-year -21 - -
Contract jobs citing COBOL 5 2 0
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 0.21% 0.084% -
As % of the Programming Languages category 0.83% 0.39% -
Number of daily rates quoted 3 2 0
10th Percentile £278 £389 -
25th Percentile £301 £391 -
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £340 £400 -
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% - -
75th Percentile - £409 -
90th Percentile - £411 -
England median daily rate £393 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -17.37% -2.56% -1.52%

All Programming Languages
North West

COBOL falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills in the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 602 511 748
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 24.91% 21.50% 27.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 451 318 560
10th Percentile £313 £325 £325
25th Percentile £359 £388 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% -10.00% -2.44%
75th Percentile £525 £538 £575
90th Percentile £621 £611 £669
England median daily rate £513 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 18 46
10th Percentile £37.16 £37.55 £42.94
25th Percentile £59.82 £46.18 -
Median hourly rate £74.26 £50.13 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +48.15% +8.54% -20.31%
75th Percentile - £73.75 £51.19
90th Percentile £89.60 £91.25 £70.00
England median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -0.53%

COBOL
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

COBOL job vacancy trend in the North West

COBOL
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing COBOL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing COBOL

COBOL
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing COBOL.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing COBOL

COBOL
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing COBOL within the North West region over the 6 months to 7 November 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
Manchester -1 3 £275 -31.25% 16
Cheshire - 2 £340 - 4
COBOL
England

COBOL
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 3 (60.00%) CICS
Cloud Services
1 2 (40.00%) AWS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (40.00%) DB2
1 2 (40.00%) Oracle Database
1 2 (40.00%) Relational Database
1 2 (40.00%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 2 (40.00%) Cucumber
1 2 (40.00%) Eclipse
1 2 (40.00%) Git
1 2 (40.00%) IntelliJ
1 2 (40.00%) Jenkins
1 2 (40.00%) Maven
1 2 (40.00%) REST Assured
1 2 (40.00%) Selenium
General
1 2 (40.00%) Banking
Job Titles
1 2 (40.00%) Automation Tester
1 2 (40.00%) Tester
2 1 (20.00%) Administrator
2 1 (20.00%) COBOL Developer
2 1 (20.00%) Developer
2 1 (20.00%) Mainframe Tester
2 1 (20.00%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (40.00%) ISPF
Miscellaneous
1 4 (80.00%) Mainframe
2 3 (60.00%) VSAM
3 1 (20.00%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 1 (20.00%) VME
1 1 (20.00%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 3 (60.00%) DevOps
2 2 (40.00%) Acceptance Criteria
2 2 (40.00%) CI/CD
2 2 (40.00%) Code Quality
2 2 (40.00%) Continuous Improvement
2 2 (40.00%) Root Cause Analysis
2 2 (40.00%) Scenario Testing
2 2 (40.00%) Software Testing
2 2 (40.00%) Test Automation
2 2 (40.00%) Test Scripting
2 2 (40.00%) Test Strategy
2 2 (40.00%) User Experience
3 1 (20.00%) Change Management
3 1 (20.00%) Data Protection
3 1 (20.00%) Migration
3 1 (20.00%) Platform Engineering
3 1 (20.00%) Problem Management
3 1 (20.00%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 4 (80.00%) JCL
2 2 (40.00%) CLIST
2 2 (40.00%) Java
2 2 (40.00%) REXX
2 2 (40.00%) SQL
System Software
1 2 (40.00%) Time Sharing Option
2 1 (20.00%) ACF2
2 1 (20.00%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1 (20.00%) CA Endevor
1 1 (20.00%) OMEGAMON
Vendors
1 2 (40.00%) Oracle
2 1 (20.00%) IBM