Public Sector Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Public Sector
England > West Midlands

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Public Sector in contract job vacancies in the West Midlands. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Public Sector over the 6 months leading up to 10 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 16 16
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -7
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 376 123 150
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.97% 7.76% 7.30%
As % of the General category 20.48% 12.58% 13.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 281 75 112
10th Percentile £350 £252 £286
25th Percentile £425 £396 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £463 £470
Median % change year-on-year +8.11% -1.60% -6.00%
75th Percentile £575 £508 £565
90th Percentile £663 £638 £649
England median daily rate £515 £511 £525
% change year-on-year +0.78% -2.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 3 10
10th Percentile £17.57 £15.87 £13.67
25th Percentile £20.31 £16.75 £16.63
Median hourly rate £31.10 £18.44 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.70% -2.97% -5.00%
75th Percentile £75.00 £18.70 £34.73
90th Percentile - £18.72 £39.00
England median hourly rate £22.50 £25.08 £25.50
% change year-on-year -10.27% -1.67% +21.43%

All General Skills
West Midlands

Public Sector 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 West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for general skills 1,836 978 1,111
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 53.56% 61.66% 54.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,177 608 754
10th Percentile £313 £200 £250
25th Percentile £402 £350 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £454 £500
Median % change year-on-year +8.29% -9.13% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £556 £625
90th Percentile £675 £675 £750
England median daily rate £525 £515 £531
% change year-on-year +1.94% -3.01% -3.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 114 80 114
10th Percentile £16.03 £14.00 £11.15
25th Percentile £20.31 £15.82 £13.50
Median hourly rate £30.27 £24.67 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.70% +40.97% -21.91%
75th Percentile £43.96 £35.55 £30.15
90th Percentile £72.85 £50.00 £55.88
England median hourly rate £33.06 £27.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +22.44% -18.18% +10.00%

Public Sector
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Public Sector relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Public Sector job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Public Sector
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Public Sector.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Public Sector in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 10 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Public Sector in the West Midlands

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Public Sector.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Public Sector

Public Sector
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Public Sector in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 10 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Public Sector in the West Midlands

Public Sector
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Public Sector within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 10 July 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
Shropshire +10 135 £492 +8.45% 16
Birmingham -1 92 £525 +10.53% 37
Warwickshire +11 42 £550 +29.41% 17
Coventry 0 33 £475 +15.15% 3
Solihull -5 22 £402 -4.29%
Staffordshire +10 13 £420 -25.00% 9
Worcestershire +1 8 - -
Public Sector
England

Public Sector
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 33 (8.78%) SAS
2 22 (5.85%) Confluence
3 16 (4.26%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (2.66%) SharePoint
5 5 (1.33%) Tuxedo
6 2 (0.53%) Apache
6 2 (0.53%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.53%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.27%) Anypoint
7 1 (0.27%) IIS
7 1 (0.27%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.27%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.27%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 8 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.27%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.13%) ContrOCC
2 7 (1.86%) Oracle Receivables
3 6 (1.60%) Oracle General Ledger
3 6 (1.60%) Oracle Payables
4 5 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (1.33%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 4 (1.06%) SAP PSCD
6 3 (0.80%) NEC Housing
6 3 (0.80%) SAP ERP
7 2 (0.53%) Maximo
7 2 (0.53%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
8 1 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
8 1 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
8 1 (0.27%) Primavera
8 1 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.27%) SAP HR
8 1 (0.27%) SAP Hybris
8 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
8 1 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 87 (23.14%) AWS
2 71 (18.88%) Azure
3 21 (5.59%) Power Platform
4 20 (5.32%) Amazon S3
5 19 (5.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 19 (5.05%) Amazon EC2
5 19 (5.05%) Azure DevOps
6 17 (4.52%) Amazon SQS
6 17 (4.52%) AWS KMS
6 17 (4.52%) Route 53
7 14 (3.72%) GitHub
8 11 (2.93%) Power Automate
9 10 (2.66%) Dynamics 365
9 10 (2.66%) PaaS
10 8 (2.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 7 (1.86%) GitHub Actions
11 7 (1.86%) Microsoft 365
12 6 (1.60%) Azure Data Factory
12 6 (1.60%) Entra ID
12 6 (1.60%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.86%) Firewall
2 4 (1.06%) VPN
3 3 (0.80%) LAN
3 3 (0.80%) WAN
4 2 (0.53%) SSL
5 1 (0.27%) BGP
5 1 (0.27%) DNS
5 1 (0.27%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.27%) Internet
5 1 (0.27%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (0.27%) IPsec
5 1 (0.27%) MPLS
5 1 (0.27%) Network Security
5 1 (0.27%) SMTP
5 1 (0.27%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (5.85%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (5.32%) Pentaho
3 19 (5.05%) Amazon RDS
3 19 (5.05%) Oracle Reports
4 17 (4.52%) Amazon Aurora
4 17 (4.52%) DynamoDB
4 17 (4.52%) Oracle Database
5 16 (4.26%) Power BI
5 16 (4.26%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 16 (4.26%) SAS Visual Analytics
6 15 (3.99%) SQL Server
7 13 (3.46%) Data Warehouse
8 8 (2.13%) Relational Database
9 7 (1.86%) Ingres
9 7 (1.86%) Metadata
10 6 (1.60%) MongoDB
10 6 (1.60%) RDBMS
11 5 (1.33%) BusinessObjects
12 4 (1.06%) NoSQL
12 4 (1.06%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 32 (8.51%) Git
2 31 (8.24%) Jenkins
2 31 (8.24%) JIRA
3 19 (5.05%) JUnit
4 18 (4.79%) GitLab
4 18 (4.79%) Mockito
5 17 (4.52%) Maven
5 17 (4.52%) SonarQube
6 13 (3.46%) DbUnit
6 13 (3.46%) jMock
7 11 (2.93%) Bitbucket Server
8 10 (2.66%) JMeter
8 10 (2.66%) Selenium
9 8 (2.13%) Postman
10 6 (1.60%) Team Foundation Server
10 6 (1.60%) WebDriver
11 5 (1.33%) Cucumber
11 5 (1.33%) Cypress.io
11 5 (1.33%) Oracle Forms
12 3 (0.80%) REST Assured
General
1 106 (28.19%) Social Skills
2 56 (14.89%) Finance
3 51 (13.56%) Analytical Skills
4 37 (9.84%) Local Government
5 22 (5.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 15 (3.99%) Police
7 14 (3.72%) Legal
8 11 (2.93%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
10 5 (1.33%) Military
11 4 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.06%) General Ledger
11 4 (1.06%) Law
11 4 (1.06%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.06%) Telecoms
12 3 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.53%) Banking
13 2 (0.53%) Retail
14 1 (0.27%) Billing
14 1 (0.27%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 56 (14.89%) Senior
2 47 (12.50%) Architect
3 46 (12.23%) Developer
4 39 (10.37%) Analyst
5 34 (9.04%) Data Engineer
6 29 (7.71%) Java Developer
6 29 (7.71%) Lead
7 19 (5.05%) Business Analyst
8 14 (3.72%) Technical Architect
9 13 (3.46%) Accountant
9 13 (3.46%) Systems Accountant
10 12 (3.19%) Data Architect
10 12 (3.19%) Release Manager
11 11 (2.93%) Applications Support
11 11 (2.93%) Senior Accountant
11 11 (2.93%) Senior Developer
11 11 (2.93%) Senior Systems Accountant
11 11 (2.93%) Solutions Architect
12 10 (2.66%) Consultant
12 10 (2.66%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (6.38%) Spring
1 24 (6.38%) Spring Boot
2 22 (5.85%) REST
3 21 (5.59%) SOAP
4 20 (5.32%) Oracle Fusion
5 18 (4.79%) ActiveMQ
5 18 (4.79%) AngularJS
6 17 (4.52%) Hibernate
6 17 (4.52%) JPA
6 17 (4.52%) Spring Batch
6 17 (4.52%) Spring Integration
6 17 (4.52%) Web Services
7 16 (4.26%) Spring Cloud
8 14 (3.72%) RESTful
9 13 (3.46%) PowerMock
10 12 (3.19%) Node.js
11 11 (2.93%) Bootstrap
12 9 (2.39%) JSON
13 7 (1.86%) Kafka
14 6 (1.60%) Gherkin
Miscellaneous
1 27 (7.18%) Product Ownership
2 20 (5.32%) Management Information System
3 18 (4.79%) Cloud Native
4 16 (4.26%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (3.72%) Data Structures
6 12 (3.19%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (2.13%) Analytical Mindset
8 6 (1.60%) Enterprise Cloud
8 6 (1.60%) NHS
9 5 (1.33%) BYOD
9 5 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.33%) Low-Code
9 5 (1.33%) Onboarding
10 3 (0.80%) Freedom of Information
11 2 (0.53%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.53%) PKI
11 2 (0.53%) Private Cloud
11 2 (0.53%) Reference Data
11 2 (0.53%) SCADA
11 2 (0.53%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 18 (4.79%) Linux
2 8 (2.13%) Unix
3 5 (1.33%) Windows
4 2 (0.53%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (44.15%) Agile
2 80 (21.28%) DevOps
3 75 (19.95%) Stakeholder Management
4 69 (18.35%) CI/CD
5 67 (17.82%) Continuous Improvement
6 62 (16.49%) Migration
7 55 (14.63%) Analytics
8 54 (14.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 52 (13.83%) Decision-Making
9 52 (13.83%) Scrum
10 43 (11.44%) Data Integration
11 39 (10.37%) Data Modelling
12 35 (9.31%) Problem-Solving
13 34 (9.04%) ETL
14 32 (8.51%) Microservices
14 32 (8.51%) Validation
15 31 (8.24%) Containerisation
16 29 (7.71%) Test Automation
17 28 (7.45%) Project Delivery
18 27 (7.18%) User-Centered Design (UCD)
Programming Languages
1 84 (22.34%) SQL
2 44 (11.70%) Java
3 21 (5.59%) Python
4 14 (3.72%) PL/SQL
5 11 (2.93%) JavaScript
6 10 (2.66%) C#
7 5 (1.33%) Bash
7 5 (1.33%) C
7 5 (1.33%) VB
7 5 (1.33%) VB6
8 3 (0.80%) ABAP
8 3 (0.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 3 (0.80%) R
9 2 (0.53%) Bicep
9 2 (0.53%) ProC
9 2 (0.53%) Scala
9 2 (0.53%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.27%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.27%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.27%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 183 (48.67%) Security Cleared
2 142 (37.77%) SC Cleared
3 34 (9.04%) BPSS Clearance
4 18 (4.79%) Degree
5 9 (2.39%) Microsoft Certification
6 6 (1.60%) ISTQB
7 5 (1.33%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.33%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (1.06%) SAS Certification
9 3 (0.80%) ACCA
9 3 (0.80%) CCA
9 3 (0.80%) CCAB
9 3 (0.80%) CIMA
9 3 (0.80%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (0.80%) CISM
9 3 (0.80%) CISSP
9 3 (0.80%) DV Cleared
9 3 (0.80%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 2 (0.53%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (7.98%) Data Quality
2 27 (7.18%) QA
3 22 (5.85%) Accessibility
4 9 (2.39%) GDPR
4 9 (2.39%) SLA
5 8 (2.13%) WCAG
6 5 (1.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (1.33%) PMO
7 2 (0.53%) Government Security Classifications
7 2 (0.53%) GRC
7 2 (0.53%) NCSC
7 2 (0.53%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.27%) COBIT
8 1 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
8 1 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 1 (0.27%) NIST
8 1 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 37 (9.84%) Docker
2 11 (2.93%) Postfix
3 6 (1.60%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.27%) etcd
4 1 (0.27%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.27%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.27%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 26 (6.91%) Kubernetes
2 20 (5.32%) Grafana
3 9 (2.39%) Prometheus
3 9 (2.39%) Terraform
4 5 (1.33%) Ansible
5 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.27%) CASB
6 1 (0.27%) Fluentd
6 1 (0.27%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.27%) SCCM
6 1 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 73 (19.41%) Oracle
2 32 (8.51%) Microsoft
3 23 (6.12%) Talend
4 17 (4.52%) Jaspersoft
5 15 (3.99%) Atlassian
5 15 (3.99%) Informatica
6 11 (2.93%) Databricks
7 10 (2.66%) Denodo
7 10 (2.66%) SAP
8 8 (2.13%) Liquidlogic
9 7 (1.86%) Dynatrace
10 6 (1.60%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.33%) Actian
11 5 (1.33%) Cloudera
11 5 (1.33%) Pega
12 3 (0.80%) Google
12 3 (0.80%) NEC
12 3 (0.80%) OneLogin
12 3 (0.80%) Salesforce
12 3 (0.80%) Sparx