COBOL Contracts in the North West

COBOL
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West requiring COBOL skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited COBOL over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 113 - 152
Rank change year-on-year - - +21
Contract jobs citing COBOL 7 0 5
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 0.36% - 0.16%
As % of the Programming Languages category 1.30% - 0.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 7 0 3
10th Percentile £370 - £396
25th Percentile £390 - £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £402 - £488
75th Percentile £426 - £497
90th Percentile £447 - £499
England median daily rate £436 £413 £500
% change year-on-year +5.70% -17.50% +6.38%

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 537 689 929
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 27.29% 25.01% 29.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 398 516 700
10th Percentile £359 £325 £325
25th Percentile £400 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.05% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £540 £544 £594
90th Percentile £625 £613 £651
England median daily rate £525 £540 £565
% change year-on-year -2.78% -4.42% +2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 32 14
10th Percentile £55.75 £41.25 £20.46
25th Percentile £65.25 £44.72 £37.80
Median hourly rate £70.00 £48.43 £40.59
Median % change year-on-year +44.54% +19.32% -2.19%
75th Percentile £86.00 £69.53 £51.93
90th Percentile £87.10 £80.15 £62.95
England median hourly rate £62.75 £62.50 £61.84
% change year-on-year +0.40% +1.07% +23.68%

COBOL
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing COBOL as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for COBOL in the North West

COBOL
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing COBOL in the North West.

Daily rate trend for COBOL in the North West

COBOL
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing COBOL in the North West.

Hourly rate trend for COBOL in the North West

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 1 May 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
Cheshire - 6 £404 - 1
Manchester - 1 £378 -
COBOL
England

COBOL
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 7 (100.00%) CICS
2 3 (42.86%) WebSphere
Cloud Services
1 1 (14.29%) AWS
1 1 (14.29%) OpenShift
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (71.43%) DB2
2 2 (28.57%) Data Warehouse
2 2 (28.57%) Easytrieve
2 2 (28.57%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 3 (42.86%) Jenkins
2 2 (28.57%) Selenium
2 2 (28.57%) SOAtest
General
1 6 (85.71%) Banking
2 2 (28.57%) Analytical Skills
2 2 (28.57%) Finance
2 2 (28.57%) General Ledger
2 2 (28.57%) Retail Banking
3 1 (14.29%) Social Skills
Job Titles
1 2 (28.57%) Architect
1 2 (28.57%) Designer
1 2 (28.57%) Developer
1 2 (28.57%) Mainframe Designer
1 2 (28.57%) Mainframe Developer
1 2 (28.57%) Test Architect
2 1 (14.29%) Mainframe Architect
2 1 (14.29%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (71.43%) Web Services
2 2 (28.57%) J2EE
2 2 (28.57%) JSON
2 2 (28.57%) REST
2 2 (28.57%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (100.00%) Mainframe
1 7 (100.00%) VSAM
2 2 (28.57%) Mobile Payment
Operating Systems
1 3 (42.86%) Unix
2 2 (28.57%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 4 (57.14%) Migration
2 3 (42.86%) Problem-Solving
3 2 (28.57%) Agile
3 2 (28.57%) API Integration
3 2 (28.57%) API Testing
3 2 (28.57%) Batch Processing
3 2 (28.57%) ETL
3 2 (28.57%) Impact Analysis
3 2 (28.57%) Mentoring
3 2 (28.57%) Performance Management
3 2 (28.57%) Risk Assessment
3 2 (28.57%) Scenario Testing
3 2 (28.57%) SDLC
3 2 (28.57%) Service Delivery
3 2 (28.57%) Stakeholder Management
3 2 (28.57%) Test Automation
3 2 (28.57%) Test Planning
3 2 (28.57%) Test Strategy
3 2 (28.57%) User Stories
4 1 (14.29%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 7 (100.00%) JCL
2 4 (57.14%) REXX
3 3 (42.86%) Java
4 1 (14.29%) Assembly Language
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (57.14%) QA
Vendors
1 2 (28.57%) Ab Initio
1 2 (28.57%) Informatica
1 2 (28.57%) Oracle
1 2 (28.57%) Parasoft