Inclusion and Diversity Contract Job Trends

Inclusion and Diversity
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Inclusion and Diversity in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Inclusion and Diversity over the 6 months leading up to 30 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 199 157 174
Rank change year-on-year -42 +17 +77
Contract jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity 525 544 653
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.42% 1.63% 1.51%
As % of the General category 2.34% 2.67% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 301 467
10th Percentile £172 £400 £400
25th Percentile £334 £469 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -25.00% - +3.45%
75th Percentile £625 £663 £675
90th Percentile £675 £775 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £525 £475
% change year-on-year -23.81% +10.53% -18.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 0 5
10th Percentile £15.42 - £48.70
25th Percentile £16.84 - £61.75
Median hourly rate £18.73 - £63.29
75th Percentile £22.14 - £65.25
90th Percentile £58.00 - £66.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.73 - £63.29
% change year-on-year - - +356.14%

All General Skills
UK

Inclusion and Diversity 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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 22,475 20,390 25,601
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 60.75% 61.24% 59.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,080 12,182 16,891
10th Percentile £280 £288 £275
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £756 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,414 695 1,101
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.48 £14.16
25th Percentile £16.50 £18.67 £16.54
Median hourly rate £23.50 £27.39 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.19% -17.02% +32.00%
75th Percentile £45.94 £54.38 £59.03
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.14 £70.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.94 £26.12 £30.48
% change year-on-year -16.02% -14.29% +37.52%

Inclusion and Diversity
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Inclusion and Diversity relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Inclusion and Diversity job vacancy trend in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity

Inclusion and Diversity
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity over the 6 months to 30 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Inclusion and Diversity in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Inclusion and Diversity

Inclusion and Diversity
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity over the 6 months to 30 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Inclusion and Diversity in the UK

Inclusion and Diversity
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Inclusion and Diversity within the UK over the 6 months to 30 December 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
England -37 475 £475 -20.83% 1,919
London +3 290 £525 -14.29% 427
Work from Home -20 212 £450 -25.00% 659
UK excluding London -69 194 £400 -23.81% 1,764
Midlands -54 61 £195 -66.09% 287
North of England -51 42 £325 -27.78% 388
South East -11 36 £400 -15.79% 538
West Midlands -54 36 £304 -47.17% 155
East Midlands -3 25 £180 -74.29% 117
North West -23 25 £425 -5.56% 194
South West -13 21 £600 +23.08% 179
Scotland -2 17 £238 -50.00% 116
East of England -13 17 £353 -32.86% 225
Yorkshire -36 15 £200 -62.35% 149
North East -13 2 £400 -11.11% 45
Northern Ireland -13 2 £450 -21.74% 21
Wales -2 1 £331 -5.08% 35

Inclusion and Diversity
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 13 (2.48%) SharePoint
2 12 (2.29%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.90%) Confluence
4 8 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
5 6 (1.14%) Apache Spark
6 5 (0.95%) CMS
7 4 (0.76%) Adobe Experience Manager
7 4 (0.76%) HCL Notes
7 4 (0.76%) WordPress
8 2 (0.38%) Apache
8 2 (0.38%) Camunda
8 2 (0.38%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.19%) Appian
9 1 (0.19%) IIS
9 1 (0.19%) Oracle Application Server
9 1 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 20 (3.81%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (2.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 6 (1.14%) Adobe Captivate
3 6 (1.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 5 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.57%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.57%) Trello
7 2 (0.38%) Adobe After Effects
7 2 (0.38%) Adobe XD
7 2 (0.38%) InVision
7 2 (0.38%) Sketch
8 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.19%) ProjectWise
Business Applications
1 8 (1.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.76%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.57%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.38%) CODA-Financials
4 2 (0.38%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.19%) Bloomberg AIM
5 1 (0.19%) Bloomberg TOMS
5 1 (0.19%) Fidessa
5 1 (0.19%) iTrent
5 1 (0.19%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.19%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.19%) ResourceLink
5 1 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.19%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.19%) SAP PS
5 1 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.19%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 120 (22.86%) Azure
2 72 (13.71%) AWS
3 35 (6.67%) Power Platform
4 32 (6.10%) Microsoft 365
5 26 (4.95%) Azure DevOps
5 26 (4.95%) GitHub
6 25 (4.76%) GCP
7 24 (4.57%) GitHub Actions
8 18 (3.43%) Entra ID
9 15 (2.86%) SaaS
10 14 (2.67%) Microsoft Purview
11 11 (2.10%) dbt
11 11 (2.10%) Google Workspace
11 11 (2.10%) Snowflake
12 10 (1.90%) Azure Data Factory
12 10 (1.90%) Serverless
13 9 (1.71%) Amazon EKS
13 9 (1.71%) Figma
14 8 (1.52%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 7 (1.33%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.48%) Network Security
2 12 (2.29%) Firewall
3 10 (1.90%) VPN
4 6 (1.14%) LAN
4 6 (1.14%) WAN
5 4 (0.76%) DNS
5 4 (0.76%) Wi-Fi
6 3 (0.57%) AMQP
6 3 (0.57%) DHCP
6 3 (0.57%) SAN
6 3 (0.57%) VLAN
7 2 (0.38%) Intranet
7 2 (0.38%) MPLS
7 2 (0.38%) SMS
7 2 (0.38%) WLAN
8 1 (0.19%) BGP
8 1 (0.19%) EIGRP
8 1 (0.19%) OSPF
8 1 (0.19%) PSTN
8 1 (0.19%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (4.00%) Data Warehouse
1 21 (4.00%) Power BI
2 15 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (2.48%) SQL Server
4 10 (1.90%) Metadata
5 9 (1.71%) NoSQL
6 7 (1.33%) MongoDB
6 7 (1.33%) Relational Database
6 7 (1.33%) Spark SQL
7 6 (1.14%) Azure SQL Database
7 6 (1.14%) Snowflake Schema
7 6 (1.14%) Tableau
8 4 (0.76%) Big Data
8 4 (0.76%) BigQuery
8 4 (0.76%) Data Lake
9 3 (0.57%) Amazon Aurora
9 3 (0.57%) Apache Cassandra
9 3 (0.57%) Apache Iceberg
9 3 (0.57%) Hadoop
9 3 (0.57%) InfluxDB
Development Applications
1 22 (4.19%) Git
2 17 (3.24%) JIRA
3 9 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.14%) Cucumber
5 5 (0.95%) Maven
6 4 (0.76%) GitLab
6 4 (0.76%) SonarQube
7 3 (0.57%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.57%) JUnit
7 3 (0.57%) Team Foundation Server
7 3 (0.57%) Vite
8 2 (0.38%) Axure RP
8 2 (0.38%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.38%) JMeter
8 2 (0.38%) Mockito
8 2 (0.38%) Selenium
8 2 (0.38%) Visual Studio
9 1 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.19%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.19%) webpack
General
1 176 (33.52%) Social Skills
2 125 (23.81%) Finance
3 49 (9.33%) Analytical Skills
4 48 (9.14%) Public Sector
5 24 (4.57%) Banking
6 20 (3.81%) Marketing
7 18 (3.43%) Organisational Skills
8 13 (2.48%) Legal
9 11 (2.10%) Local Government
9 11 (2.10%) Retail
10 10 (1.90%) Fire and Rescue
11 9 (1.71%) Manufacturing
12 8 (1.52%) Documentation Skills
13 7 (1.33%) Pharmaceutical
14 5 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.95%) Law
14 5 (0.95%) Military
14 5 (0.95%) Publishing
15 4 (0.76%) Police
15 4 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 85 (16.19%) Analyst
2 43 (8.19%) Lead
3 42 (8.00%) Architect
4 38 (7.24%) Developer
5 37 (7.05%) Senior
6 31 (5.90%) Project Manager
7 27 (5.14%) Data Engineer
7 27 (5.14%) Support Engineer
8 26 (4.95%) Business Analyst
9 21 (4.00%) Consultant
10 19 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
11 17 (3.24%) IT Analyst
12 16 (3.05%) IT Engineer
12 16 (3.05%) IT Support
13 15 (2.86%) Service Analyst
14 14 (2.67%) Designer
14 14 (2.67%) Solutions Architect
14 14 (2.67%) Support Analyst
15 13 (2.48%) DevOps Engineer
15 13 (2.48%) PMO Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (3.24%) EDI
2 14 (2.67%) React
2 14 (2.67%) Spring
3 13 (2.48%) Spring Boot
4 12 (2.29%) .NET
5 10 (1.90%) REST
6 9 (1.71%) AngularJS
6 9 (1.71%) HTML
6 9 (1.71%) PySpark
7 8 (1.52%) YAML
8 7 (1.33%) Middleware
9 6 (1.14%) CSS
9 6 (1.14%) Kafka
9 6 (1.14%) SOAP
10 5 (0.95%) RESTful
10 5 (0.95%) XML
11 4 (0.76%) .NET Framework
11 4 (0.76%) Hibernate
11 4 (0.76%) JPA
11 4 (0.76%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 24 (4.57%) Onboarding
2 20 (3.81%) Management Information System
3 19 (3.62%) Cloud Native
4 18 (3.43%) Data Centre
5 10 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (1.71%) Product Ownership
7 8 (1.52%) Public Cloud
8 7 (1.33%) Low-Code
8 7 (1.33%) Mobile App
8 7 (1.33%) Virtual Team
9 5 (0.95%) Driving Licence
9 5 (0.95%) e-Learning
9 5 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
9 5 (0.95%) Hybrid Cloud
9 5 (0.95%) Reinsurance
9 5 (0.95%) Replication
10 4 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (0.76%) Distributed Systems
10 4 (0.76%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (0.76%) Learning Management System
Operating Systems
1 42 (8.00%) Windows
2 11 (2.10%) Windows Server
3 9 (1.71%) Linux
4 7 (1.33%) Windows 10
5 3 (0.57%) Mac OS
6 2 (0.38%) Android
6 2 (0.38%) Apple iOS
6 2 (0.38%) Oracle Linux
7 1 (0.19%) CentOS
7 1 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.19%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (25.71%) Problem-Solving
2 85 (16.19%) Agile
3 69 (13.14%) DevOps
4 68 (12.95%) CI/CD
5 60 (11.43%) Stakeholder Management
6 46 (8.76%) Continuous Improvement
7 44 (8.38%) Migration
8 38 (7.24%) Analytics
9 37 (7.05%) Infrastructure as Code
10 36 (6.86%) Project Management
10 36 (6.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 33 (6.29%) Data Modelling
11 33 (6.29%) Decision-Making
12 32 (6.10%) Test Automation
13 29 (5.52%) Data Governance
14 28 (5.33%) Mentoring
15 27 (5.14%) Business Intelligence
15 27 (5.14%) Containerisation
16 26 (4.95%) Business Analysis
17 25 (4.76%) AI
Programming Languages
1 55 (10.48%) Python
1 55 (10.48%) SQL
2 34 (6.48%) Java
3 22 (4.19%) JavaScript
4 12 (2.29%) C#
5 11 (2.10%) PowerShell
6 8 (1.52%) TypeScript
7 5 (0.95%) Bash
7 5 (0.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 5 (0.95%) Go
8 4 (0.76%) Rust
8 4 (0.76%) Scala
9 3 (0.57%) C++
9 3 (0.57%) R
10 2 (0.38%) Apex Code
10 2 (0.38%) AWK
10 2 (0.38%) C
10 2 (0.38%) Perl
10 2 (0.38%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.38%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 60 (11.43%) Security Cleared
2 50 (9.52%) SC Cleared
3 32 (6.10%) Degree
4 16 (3.05%) AWS Certification
5 15 (2.86%) DBS Check
6 9 (1.71%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (1.52%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.14%) CISSP
9 4 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 4 (0.76%) CTC Cleared
9 4 (0.76%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.76%) Oracle Certification
9 4 (0.76%) PMI Certification
9 4 (0.76%) PMP
10 3 (0.57%) ACCA
10 3 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.57%) CIMA
10 3 (0.57%) CompTIA CySA+
10 3 (0.57%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (4.76%) Accessibility
2 19 (3.62%) Data Quality
2 19 (3.62%) QA
3 15 (2.86%) GDPR
4 14 (2.67%) PMO
5 11 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (1.52%) SLA
7 5 (0.95%) Actionable Recommendations
7 5 (0.95%) GRC
7 5 (0.95%) NIST
8 4 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.57%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.57%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.57%) WCAG
10 2 (0.38%) GMP
10 2 (0.38%) ISO 22301
10 2 (0.38%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.19%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.19%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 33 (6.29%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.57%) Docker
3 8 (1.52%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.95%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.57%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (0.38%) Firmware
7 1 (0.19%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 39 (7.43%) Terraform
2 29 (5.52%) Kubernetes
3 13 (2.48%) Microsoft Intune
4 12 (2.29%) Grafana
5 9 (1.71%) Prometheus
6 6 (1.14%) SCCM
7 5 (0.95%) Ansible
8 4 (0.76%) Argo
8 4 (0.76%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.57%) Kibana
10 1 (0.19%) Cisco CUCM
10 1 (0.19%) Data Guard
10 1 (0.19%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.19%) Nessus
10 1 (0.19%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 1 (0.19%) RSA Archer
10 1 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 87 (16.57%) Microsoft
2 22 (4.19%) ServiceNow
3 19 (3.62%) Google
3 19 (3.62%) Oracle
4 15 (2.86%) Cisco
4 15 (2.86%) Databricks
5 13 (2.48%) Salesforce
6 12 (2.29%) Adobe
7 11 (2.10%) VMware
8 6 (1.14%) Dynatrace
8 6 (1.14%) SAP
9 5 (0.95%) Apple
9 5 (0.95%) Citrix
10 4 (0.76%) Atlassian
10 4 (0.76%) Commvault
10 4 (0.76%) Lotus
10 4 (0.76%) Netskope
11 3 (0.57%) Bloomberg
11 3 (0.57%) Meraki
11 3 (0.57%) Talend