Retail Contract Job Trends in the North West

Retailing
England > North West

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Retail in contract job vacancies in the North West. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Retail over the 6 months leading up to 5 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 117 81 80
Rank change year-on-year -36 -1 +5
Contract jobs citing Retail 41 42 61
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 1.43% 2.02% 2.19%
As % of the General category 2.41% 3.48% 3.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 32 24 41
10th Percentile £315 £294 £126
25th Percentile £356 £413 £308
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £450 £525
Median % change year-on-year +16.67% -14.29% +10.53%
75th Percentile £625 £603 £588
90th Percentile - £646 £720
England median daily rate £500 £525 £514
% change year-on-year -4.76% +2.19% -2.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 4 9
10th Percentile - - £11.13
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.13 -
Median hourly rate £19.00 £25.32 £13.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.95% +94.73% -
75th Percentile £19.50 £33.75 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £18.87 £32.50 £16.30
% change year-on-year -41.94% +99.39% -17.72%

All General Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 1,700 1,207 1,528
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 59.23% 58.03% 54.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,069 696 939
10th Percentile £200 £267 £265
25th Percentile £356 £375 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +2.04%
75th Percentile £551 £575 £583
90th Percentile £638 £675 £675
England median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 140 101 199
10th Percentile £15.62 £16.00 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.75 £22.72 £14.50
Median hourly rate £32.00 £30.40 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% +71.56% -31.85%
75th Percentile £55.36 £50.00 £36.72
90th Percentile £74.26 £73.56 £46.54
England median hourly rate £24.00 £30.45 £25.90
% change year-on-year -21.18% +17.59% -20.32%

Retail
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Retail job vacancy trend in the North West

Retail
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

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

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

Retail
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Retail in the North West over the 6 months to 5 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Retail in the North West

Retail
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

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

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

Retail
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 Retail within the North West region over the 6 months to 5 March 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
Manchester -14 31 £600 +26.32% 64
Cheshire -24 6 £331 -19.76% 19
Lancashire - 2 £298 - 31
Merseyside -19 1 £413 -23.26% 15
Retail
England

Retail
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 8 (19.51%) Confluence
2 2 (4.88%) Microsoft Exchange
2 2 (4.88%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (9.76%) MS Visio
2 2 (4.88%) Chatbot
3 1 (2.44%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (2.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (2.44%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (2.44%) BambooHR
1 1 (2.44%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 9 (21.95%) Azure
2 4 (9.76%) AWS
2 4 (9.76%) Entra ID
3 3 (7.32%) Azure DevOps
3 3 (7.32%) GCP
3 3 (7.32%) Serverless
4 2 (4.88%) Azure AKS
4 2 (4.88%) Azure Functions
4 2 (4.88%) Azure Logic Apps
4 2 (4.88%) Azure Monitor
4 2 (4.88%) Azure Storage
4 2 (4.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 2 (4.88%) Cloud Computing
4 2 (4.88%) GitHub
4 2 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
4 2 (4.88%) Microsoft 365
4 2 (4.88%) OneDrive
4 2 (4.88%) PaaS
4 2 (4.88%) Power Platform
4 2 (4.88%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.44%) NFC
1 1 (2.44%) RFID
1 1 (2.44%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (4.88%) Data Lake
1 2 (4.88%) Power BI
2 1 (2.44%) BigQuery
2 1 (2.44%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (2.44%) DynamoDB
2 1 (2.44%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 9 (21.95%) JIRA
2 2 (4.88%) Git
3 1 (2.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
3 1 (2.44%) Selenium
General
1 18 (43.90%) Social Skills
2 11 (26.83%) Finance
3 6 (14.63%) Banking
4 3 (7.32%) Influencing Skills
5 2 (4.88%) Manufacturing
6 1 (2.44%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 9 (21.95%) Architect
2 8 (19.51%) Analyst
3 6 (14.63%) Principal Engineer
3 6 (14.63%) Principal Software Engineer
3 6 (14.63%) Service Management Architect
3 6 (14.63%) Software Engineer
4 5 (12.20%) Business Analyst
4 5 (12.20%) Lead
4 5 (12.20%) Senior
5 4 (9.76%) Banking Analyst
5 4 (9.76%) Banking Business Analyst
5 4 (9.76%) E-Commerce Manager
5 4 (9.76%) Enterprise Architect
5 4 (9.76%) Project Manager
5 4 (9.76%) Senior Manager
5 4 (9.76%) Senior Project Manager
6 3 (7.32%) E-Commerce Project Manager
6 3 (7.32%) IT Manager
6 3 (7.32%) Senior E-Commerce Manager
7 2 (4.88%) IT Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (4.88%) ARM Templates
1 2 (4.88%) Middleware
1 2 (4.88%) REST
2 1 (2.44%) .NET
2 1 (2.44%) .NET Core
2 1 (2.44%) ASP.NET
2 1 (2.44%) ASP.NET MVC
2 1 (2.44%) CSS
2 1 (2.44%) HTML
2 1 (2.44%) PySpark
2 1 (2.44%) React
2 1 (2.44%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 11 (26.83%) Product Ownership
2 6 (14.63%) Driving Licence
3 5 (12.20%) Cloud Native
3 5 (12.20%) CMDB
4 3 (7.32%) Data Structures
4 3 (7.32%) Taxonomies
5 2 (4.88%) AI Agents
5 2 (4.88%) Data Centre
5 2 (4.88%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (4.88%) EPoS
5 2 (4.88%) Mobile Banking
5 2 (4.88%) Onboarding
6 1 (2.44%) IoT
6 1 (2.44%) Management Information System
Processes & Methodologies
1 16 (39.02%) Agile
2 14 (34.15%) Stakeholder Management
3 9 (21.95%) Software Engineering
4 8 (19.51%) Data Modelling
4 8 (19.51%) Project Management
5 7 (17.07%) B2C
5 7 (17.07%) E-Commerce
5 7 (17.07%) Translating Business Requirements
6 6 (14.63%) Service Management
7 5 (12.20%) Analytics
7 5 (12.20%) CI/CD
7 5 (12.20%) Enterprise Architecture
7 5 (12.20%) Integration Patterns
7 5 (12.20%) ITSM
7 5 (12.20%) Observability
7 5 (12.20%) Problem-Solving
7 5 (12.20%) Roadmaps
7 5 (12.20%) User Stories
8 4 (9.76%) Incident Response
8 4 (9.76%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 6 (14.63%) SQL
2 5 (12.20%) Python
3 4 (9.76%) PowerShell
4 2 (4.88%) Bicep
4 2 (4.88%) Java
5 1 (2.44%) C#
5 1 (2.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 5 (12.20%) Degree
2 4 (9.76%) Master's Degree
2 4 (9.76%) MBA
3 2 (4.88%) Azure Certification
3 2 (4.88%) BPSS Clearance
3 2 (4.88%) Microsoft Certification
4 1 (2.44%) IIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (7.32%) Data Quality
1 3 (7.32%) GDPR
2 2 (4.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (2.44%) Accessibility
3 1 (2.44%) PMO
3 1 (2.44%) QA
System Software
1 4 (9.76%) Active Directory
2 3 (7.32%) Docker
3 2 (4.88%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 2 (4.88%) Kubernetes
1 2 (4.88%) SCCM
1 2 (4.88%) Terraform
Vendors
1 7 (17.07%) Microsoft
2 4 (9.76%) BMC
2 4 (9.76%) Google
3 3 (7.32%) ServiceNow
4 2 (4.88%) Dynatrace
4 2 (4.88%) SolarWinds
5 1 (2.44%) Databricks
5 1 (2.44%) Salesforce
5 1 (2.44%) Sitecore
5 1 (2.44%) Workday