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 3 September 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 16 18
Rank change year-on-year +6 +2 -6
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 425 166 132
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.37% 9.46% 6.97%
As % of the General category 23.40% 14.89% 12.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 315 112 85
10th Percentile £360 £264 £268
25th Percentile £425 £406 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% +1.06% -6.00%
75th Percentile £575 £528 £550
90th Percentile £665 £588 £650
England median daily rate £525 £501 £520
% change year-on-year +4.90% -3.75% -3.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 2 10
10th Percentile £17.74 £18.65 £18.25
25th Percentile £20.31 £19.29 £18.50
Median hourly rate £21.50 £20.74 £30.03
Median % change year-on-year +3.65% -30.92% +58.04%
75th Percentile £75.00 £22.34 £35.00
90th Percentile - £23.08 £59.03
England median hourly rate £21.35 £21.95 £24.18
% change year-on-year -2.73% -9.22% +20.30%

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 1,816 1,115 1,059
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 52.87% 63.57% 55.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,116 704 687
10th Percentile £316 £230 £217
25th Percentile £410 £389 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £582 £575 £626
90th Percentile £675 £638 £743
England median daily rate £525 £500 £538
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.98% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 145 84 61
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.57 £20.38 £15.13
Median hourly rate £27.24 £29.67 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.17% +31.84% +8.51%
75th Percentile £40.03 £40.46 £31.31
90th Percentile £67.84 £50.00 £48.75
England median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +25.25% -34.02% +38.62%

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 3 September 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 3 September 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 3 September 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 +8 206 £500 -2.91% 44
Birmingham -7 84 £525 +10.53% 135
Coventry +8 43 £425 -8.11% 4
Warwickshire -11 19 £450 -8.16% 6
Solihull -15 16 £493 +6.49% 4
Staffordshire +5 15 £850 +51.79% 4
Worcestershire +8 10 £450 -
Dudley -3 3 £375 -
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 34 (8.00%) SAS
2 27 (6.35%) Confluence
3 17 (4.00%) Apache Airflow
4 13 (3.06%) SharePoint
5 5 (1.18%) Tuxedo
6 4 (0.94%) Apache
6 4 (0.94%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.24%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.24%) IIS
8 1 (0.24%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.24%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 9 (2.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 13 (3.06%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (1.88%) ContrOCC
3 7 (1.65%) Oracle Receivables
4 6 (1.41%) Oracle General Ledger
4 6 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
5 5 (1.18%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 4 (0.94%) SAP PSCD
7 3 (0.71%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.47%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.47%) Oracle Payroll
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.24%) Primavera
9 1 (0.24%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.24%) SAP HR
9 1 (0.24%) SAP Hybris
9 1 (0.24%) SAP IS-U
9 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 96 (22.59%) AWS
2 95 (22.35%) Azure
3 38 (8.94%) Azure DevOps
4 36 (8.47%) Power Platform
5 32 (7.53%) Power Automate
6 27 (6.35%) Dynamics 365
7 18 (4.24%) GitHub
7 18 (4.24%) PowerApps
8 13 (3.06%) Azure Data Factory
8 13 (3.06%) Serverless
9 12 (2.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 11 (2.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 11 (2.59%) PaaS
11 10 (2.35%) Amazon EC2
11 10 (2.35%) Amazon S3
11 10 (2.35%) Azure Functions
12 8 (1.88%) AWS KMS
12 8 (1.88%) GitHub Actions
12 8 (1.88%) Route 53
12 8 (1.88%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.18%) Firewall
2 3 (0.71%) VPN
3 2 (0.47%) LAN
3 2 (0.47%) SSL
3 2 (0.47%) WAN
4 1 (0.24%) DNS
4 1 (0.24%) HTTPS
4 1 (0.24%) Internet
4 1 (0.24%) SMTP
4 1 (0.24%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (5.41%) Data Warehouse
1 23 (5.41%) Pentaho
2 21 (4.94%) Oracle Database
3 20 (4.71%) Power BI
3 20 (4.71%) SQL Server
4 18 (4.24%) SAS Visual Analytics
5 17 (4.00%) SAS Enterprise Guide
6 16 (3.76%) PostgreSQL
7 15 (3.53%) Metadata
7 15 (3.53%) Relational Database
8 12 (2.82%) Data Lake
9 10 (2.35%) NoSQL
9 10 (2.35%) Oracle Reports
10 8 (1.88%) Amazon Aurora
10 8 (1.88%) Amazon RDS
10 8 (1.88%) DynamoDB
11 7 (1.65%) Ingres
11 7 (1.65%) MongoDB
12 6 (1.41%) RDBMS
13 5 (1.18%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 39 (9.18%) Git
2 38 (8.94%) JIRA
3 30 (7.06%) Jenkins
4 24 (5.65%) GitLab
5 17 (4.00%) JUnit
6 16 (3.76%) SonarQube
7 15 (3.53%) Mockito
7 15 (3.53%) Selenium
8 14 (3.29%) Maven
9 13 (3.06%) Postman
10 10 (2.35%) WebDriver
11 9 (2.12%) Cucumber
11 9 (2.12%) Cypress.io
11 9 (2.12%) Team Foundation Server
12 8 (1.88%) JMeter
13 6 (1.41%) Bitbucket Server
13 6 (1.41%) DbUnit
13 6 (1.41%) jMock
14 5 (1.18%) Oracle Forms
15 3 (0.71%) Visual Studio
General
1 137 (32.24%) Social Skills
2 62 (14.59%) Analytical Skills
2 62 (14.59%) Finance
3 37 (8.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 29 (6.82%) Local Government
5 23 (5.41%) Influencing Skills
6 14 (3.29%) Organisational Skills
7 11 (2.59%) Military
8 8 (1.88%) Legal
9 7 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.41%) Police
11 5 (1.18%) Banking
11 5 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.94%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.47%) Advertising
13 2 (0.47%) Documentation Skills
13 2 (0.47%) Law
13 2 (0.47%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.47%) Retail
14 1 (0.24%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 77 (18.12%) Developer
2 66 (15.53%) Senior
3 63 (14.82%) Architect
4 49 (11.53%) Analyst
5 48 (11.29%) Lead
6 43 (10.12%) Data Engineer
7 37 (8.71%) Data Architect
8 23 (5.41%) Business Analyst
9 22 (5.18%) Java Developer
10 21 (4.94%) Senior Developer
11 15 (3.53%) Dynamics 365 Developer
12 13 (3.06%) Test Analyst
13 12 (2.82%) Senior Analyst
14 11 (2.59%) DevOps Engineer
14 11 (2.59%) Senior Java Developer
14 11 (2.59%) Technical Architect
15 10 (2.35%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
15 10 (2.35%) HR Director
15 10 (2.35%) Release Manager
16 9 (2.12%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (6.59%) SOAP
2 27 (6.35%) REST
3 24 (5.65%) Spring
4 21 (4.94%) Spring Boot
5 19 (4.47%) JSON
6 17 (4.00%) Oracle Fusion
7 15 (3.53%) ActiveMQ
7 15 (3.53%) RESTful
8 14 (3.29%) AngularJS
8 14 (3.29%) Hibernate
8 14 (3.29%) JPA
8 14 (3.29%) Web Services
9 13 (3.06%) Spring Cloud
10 11 (2.59%) Gherkin
10 11 (2.59%) XML
11 10 (2.35%) Kafka
11 10 (2.35%) Terraform
12 8 (1.88%) Playwright
12 8 (1.88%) React
12 8 (1.88%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 34 (8.00%) Product Ownership
2 32 (7.53%) Cloud Native
3 21 (4.94%) Management Information System
4 14 (3.29%) Legacy Systems
5 13 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
6 10 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
7 9 (2.12%) Data Structures
8 7 (1.65%) Taxonomies
9 6 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
9 6 (1.41%) Data Fabric
9 6 (1.41%) Enterprise Cloud
9 6 (1.41%) Low-Code
9 6 (1.41%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.18%) BYOD
10 5 (1.18%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
11 3 (0.71%) Autonomous Agent
11 3 (0.71%) Freedom of Information
11 3 (0.71%) NHS
12 2 (0.47%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.59%) Linux
2 8 (1.88%) Unix
3 5 (1.18%) Windows
4 2 (0.47%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 219 (51.53%) Agile
2 110 (25.88%) DevOps
3 105 (24.71%) Continuous Improvement
4 101 (23.76%) CI/CD
5 99 (23.29%) Stakeholder Management
6 83 (19.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 76 (17.88%) Analytics
8 74 (17.41%) Scrum
9 73 (17.18%) Problem-Solving
10 68 (16.00%) Migration
11 58 (13.65%) Data Integration
11 58 (13.65%) Data Modelling
11 58 (13.65%) Decision-Making
12 51 (12.00%) Technical Leadership
13 44 (10.35%) AI
13 44 (10.35%) Digital Transformation Programme
14 43 (10.12%) Microservices
15 42 (9.88%) Test Automation
16 41 (9.65%) ETL
16 41 (9.65%) Sprint Planning
Programming Languages
1 70 (16.47%) SQL
2 47 (11.06%) Java
3 34 (8.00%) JavaScript
4 22 (5.18%) Python
5 21 (4.94%) C#
6 13 (3.06%) Scala
6 13 (3.06%) TypeScript
7 9 (2.12%) PL/SQL
8 8 (1.88%) VB
8 8 (1.88%) VB6
9 5 (1.18%) C
10 4 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 4 (0.94%) Kotlin
10 4 (0.94%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.71%) ABAP
11 3 (0.71%) Bash
11 3 (0.71%) R
11 3 (0.71%) VBA
12 2 (0.47%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.47%) ProC
Qualifications
1 196 (46.12%) Security Cleared
2 171 (40.24%) SC Cleared
3 69 (16.24%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (4.94%) Microsoft Certification
5 20 (4.71%) Degree
6 13 (3.06%) ISTQB
7 6 (1.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 4 (0.94%) ACCA
8 4 (0.94%) Azure Certification
8 4 (0.94%) CIMA
8 4 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
8 4 (0.94%) SAS Certification
9 3 (0.71%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.71%) CCA
9 3 (0.71%) CCAB
9 3 (0.71%) CISM
9 3 (0.71%) CISSP
9 3 (0.71%) DV Cleared
10 2 (0.47%) APMG
10 2 (0.47%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (10.59%) QA
2 40 (9.41%) Accessibility
3 35 (8.24%) Data Quality
4 19 (4.47%) WCAG
5 16 (3.76%) GDPR
6 8 (1.88%) SLA
7 7 (1.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (1.18%) GRC
9 4 (0.94%) NCSC
10 3 (0.71%) PMO
11 2 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials
11 2 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.47%) NIST
12 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.24%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 37 (8.71%) Docker
2 5 (1.18%) Postfix
3 4 (0.94%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.24%) etcd
4 1 (0.24%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.24%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 27 (6.35%) Kubernetes
2 18 (4.24%) Grafana
3 15 (3.53%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.94%) Ansible
5 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.24%) CASB
6 1 (0.24%) Fluentd
6 1 (0.24%) SCCM
6 1 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 69 (16.24%) Oracle
2 48 (11.29%) Microsoft
3 23 (5.41%) Talend
4 13 (3.06%) Denodo
5 10 (2.35%) Databricks
5 10 (2.35%) Informatica
6 9 (2.12%) ServiceNow
7 8 (1.88%) Jaspersoft
7 8 (1.88%) Liquidlogic
7 8 (1.88%) SAP
8 7 (1.65%) Atlassian
8 7 (1.65%) Dynatrace
8 7 (1.65%) Pega
9 5 (1.18%) Actian
10 4 (0.94%) Blue Prism
11 3 (0.71%) UiPath
12 2 (0.47%) Alteryx
12 2 (0.47%) MuleSoft
12 2 (0.47%) OneLogin
12 2 (0.47%) Sparx