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 16 August 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 67 78 85
Rank change year-on-year +11 +7 -11
Contract jobs citing Retail 120 56 42
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 3.13% 2.54% 1.75%
As % of the General category 6.03% 4.15% 3.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 83 44 35
10th Percentile £365 £303 £198
25th Percentile £496 £453 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% +11.11% -13.46%
75th Percentile £600 £609 £575
90th Percentile £700 £671 £600
England median daily rate £550 £525 £505
% change year-on-year +4.76% +3.96% -4.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 1
10th Percentile £12.98 - -
25th Percentile £13.60 - -
Median hourly rate £21.00 £95.00 £12.00
Median % change year-on-year -77.89% +691.67% -
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £17.50 £16.30 £16.30
% change year-on-year +7.36% - -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 1,990 1,350 1,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 51.99% 61.20% 54.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,129 859 779
10th Percentile £240 £268 £300
25th Percentile £400 £375 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £469 £500
Median % change year-on-year +6.61% -6.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £580 £585
90th Percentile £671 £676 £681
England median daily rate £525 £510 £538
% change year-on-year +2.94% -5.20% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 250 111 105
10th Percentile £16.01 £12.82 -
25th Percentile £24.72 £15.64 £16.06
Median hourly rate £35.00 £28.75 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% -11.54% +25.00%
75th Percentile £59.11 £52.50 £43.10
90th Percentile £83.75 £72.50 £56.10
England median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +29.22% -34.02% +38.62%

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 16 August 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 16 August 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 +6 85 £550 +10.00% 120
Merseyside -2 19 £588 +18.69% 34
Cheshire -9 7 £492 +80.55% 38
Lancashire -7 4 - - 42
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 11 (9.17%) Confluence
2 1 (0.83%) Anypoint
2 1 (0.83%) Mendix
2 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (0.83%) SharePoint
2 1 (0.83%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 3 (2.50%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (3.33%) SAP S/4HANA
1 4 (3.33%) Shopify
2 2 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (1.67%) SAP MDG
3 1 (0.83%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.83%) OpenText VIM for SAP
3 1 (0.83%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.83%) SAP SD
3 1 (0.83%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 33 (27.50%) AWS
2 16 (13.33%) Azure
3 12 (10.00%) GitHub
4 10 (8.33%) GitHub Actions
5 8 (6.67%) Snowflake
6 7 (5.83%) GCP
7 6 (5.00%) Anthropic Claude
7 6 (5.00%) GitHub Copilot
7 6 (5.00%) Google Gemini
7 6 (5.00%) Serverless
8 4 (3.33%) Amazon ECS
8 4 (3.33%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (3.33%) Azure Logic Apps
8 4 (3.33%) Entra ID
8 4 (3.33%) SaaS
9 3 (2.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (2.50%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
9 3 (2.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 3 (2.50%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.67%) Firewall
1 2 (1.67%) Wi-Fi
1 2 (1.67%) Wireless
2 1 (0.83%) Cisco Firepower
2 1 (0.83%) Network Security
2 1 (0.83%) SD-WAN
2 1 (0.83%) Unified Communications
2 1 (0.83%) VPN
2 1 (0.83%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (5.00%) Data Lake
1 6 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
2 5 (4.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 4 (3.33%) Amazon Redshift
4 3 (2.50%) Power BI
4 3 (2.50%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 3 (2.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 2 (1.67%) DynamoDB
5 2 (1.67%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 11 (9.17%) JIRA
2 6 (5.00%) Claude Code
2 6 (5.00%) Git
3 2 (1.67%) GitLab
4 1 (0.83%) Hudson
General
1 48 (40.00%) Social Skills
2 41 (34.17%) Finance
3 19 (15.83%) Manufacturing
4 16 (13.33%) Banking
5 10 (8.33%) Back Office
6 6 (5.00%) Marketing
7 5 (4.17%) Telecoms
8 4 (3.33%) Legal
9 3 (2.50%) Advertising
9 3 (2.50%) Analytical Skills
9 3 (2.50%) Billing
9 3 (2.50%) Retail Banking
10 1 (0.83%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
10 1 (0.83%) Retail Finance
Job Titles
1 21 (17.50%) Analyst
2 20 (16.67%) Senior
3 18 (15.00%) Architect
4 13 (10.83%) Business Analyst
4 13 (10.83%) Solutions Architect
5 9 (7.50%) Project Manager
5 9 (7.50%) Software Engineer
6 7 (5.83%) Principal Engineer
7 6 (5.00%) Lead
8 5 (4.17%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 5 (4.17%) Systems Analyst
8 5 (4.17%) Technical Analyst
9 4 (3.33%) Business Systems Analyst
9 4 (3.33%) Developer
9 4 (3.33%) IT Manager
9 4 (3.33%) IT Project Manager
9 4 (3.33%) Principal Software Engineer
9 4 (3.33%) Product Manager
9 4 (3.33%) Senior Developer
9 4 (3.33%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (8.33%) React
2 7 (5.83%) Node.js
2 7 (5.83%) REST
3 6 (5.00%) Next.js
4 5 (4.17%) MACH
5 4 (3.33%) Spring
5 4 (3.33%) Spring Boot
6 3 (2.50%) Jakarta EE
6 3 (2.50%) Middleware
7 2 (1.67%) ARM Templates
7 2 (1.67%) EDI
7 2 (1.67%) Kafka
8 1 (0.83%) JSON
8 1 (0.83%) Lambda Expressions
8 1 (0.83%) OAuth
8 1 (0.83%) OAuth2
8 1 (0.83%) OpenAPI
8 1 (0.83%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 17 (14.17%) Cloud Native
2 13 (10.83%) Product Ownership
3 10 (8.33%) Legacy Systems
4 7 (5.83%) Mobile App
5 6 (5.00%) Credit Risk
6 5 (4.17%) EPoS
7 4 (3.33%) Driving Licence
7 4 (3.33%) Greenfield Project
7 4 (3.33%) Onboarding
8 3 (2.50%) Culture of Ownership
8 3 (2.50%) FMCG
9 2 (1.67%) AI Agents
9 2 (1.67%) Data Structures
9 2 (1.67%) Digital Media
9 2 (1.67%) iPad
10 1 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
10 1 (0.83%) Data Centre
10 1 (0.83%) Digital Wallet
10 1 (0.83%) Enterprise Cloud
10 1 (0.83%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.67%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (40.00%) Agile
2 41 (34.17%) Stakeholder Management
3 28 (23.33%) CI/CD
4 26 (21.67%) E-Commerce
5 23 (19.17%) Logistics
6 21 (17.50%) Migration
7 20 (16.67%) Event-Driven
8 18 (15.00%) AI
8 18 (15.00%) Software Engineering
9 17 (14.17%) DevOps
9 17 (14.17%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 16 (13.33%) Roadmaps
10 16 (13.33%) Supplier Management
11 15 (12.50%) Project Management
12 14 (11.67%) Continuous Improvement
12 14 (11.67%) Data Modelling
12 14 (11.67%) Microservices
13 13 (10.83%) Infrastructure as Code
13 13 (10.83%) Observability
14 12 (10.00%) Systems Analysis
Programming Languages
1 11 (9.17%) TypeScript
2 9 (7.50%) SQL
3 7 (5.83%) Python
4 4 (3.33%) Java
5 3 (2.50%) Bicep
6 2 (1.67%) Bash
6 2 (1.67%) PowerShell
7 1 (0.83%) C#
7 1 (0.83%) Korn
Qualifications
1 6 (5.00%) BPSS Clearance
2 4 (3.33%) Security Cleared
3 3 (2.50%) Azure Certification
4 2 (1.67%) City & Guilds
4 2 (1.67%) ITIL Certification
4 2 (1.67%) SC Cleared
5 1 (0.83%) DBS Check
5 1 (0.83%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (7.50%) QA
2 4 (3.33%) Data Quality
3 1 (0.83%) GRC
3 1 (0.83%) PMO
System Software
1 9 (7.50%) Docker
2 3 (2.50%) Active Directory
3 2 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 12 (10.00%) Terraform
2 9 (7.50%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.83%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 9 (7.50%) Microsoft
1 9 (7.50%) Salesforce
1 9 (7.50%) SAP
2 7 (5.83%) Databricks
3 3 (2.50%) Cisco
3 3 (2.50%) MuleSoft
3 3 (2.50%) ServiceNow
4 2 (1.67%) Ariba
4 2 (1.67%) Fortinet
4 2 (1.67%) Infor
4 2 (1.67%) Informatica
4 2 (1.67%) Oracle
4 2 (1.67%) Teradata
4 2 (1.67%) Workday
5 1 (0.83%) Barracuda Networks
5 1 (0.83%) Okta
5 1 (0.83%) OpenText
5 1 (0.83%) Palo Alto
5 1 (0.83%) Qualys
5 1 (0.83%) Tenable