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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 15 22
Rank change year-on-year +4 +7 -11
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 401 163 126
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 11.67% 9.57% 6.66%
As % of the General category 22.12% 14.93% 12.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 305 108 90
10th Percentile £358 £254 £262
25th Percentile £425 £406 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £466
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% +1.88% -6.75%
75th Percentile £575 £528 £550
90th Percentile £663 £588 £639
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 3 10
10th Percentile £17.57 £15.87 £18.25
25th Percentile £20.31 £16.75 £18.50
Median hourly rate £21.50 £18.44 £30.03
Median % change year-on-year +16.63% -38.61% +66.82%
75th Percentile £75.00 £18.70 £35.00
90th Percentile - £18.72 £39.00
England median hourly rate £21.50 £21.39 £26.13
% change year-on-year +0.54% -18.14% +30.63%

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 1,813 1,092 1,043
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 52.78% 64.12% 55.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,134 688 696
10th Percentile £315 £220 £240
25th Percentile £405 £375 £374
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.89% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £580 £573 £635
90th Percentile £675 £638 £750
England median daily rate £525 £508 £540
% change year-on-year +3.45% -6.02% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 142 83 67
10th Percentile £13.55 £14.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.34 £18.11 £14.85
Median hourly rate £27.65 £29.00 £19.59
Median % change year-on-year -4.66% +48.03% -9.03%
75th Percentile £43.96 £40.25 £32.27
90th Percentile £67.84 £50.00 £49.25
England median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +27.24% -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 20 August 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 20 August 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 20 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
Shropshire +9 185 £497 -3.50% 28
Birmingham -6 78 £525 +10.53% 62
Coventry +8 42 £425 - 1
Warwickshire -7 21 £450 +5.88% 5
Solihull -12 18 £447 +5.18%
Staffordshire +9 16 £850 +51.79% 8
Worcestershire +3 9 £450 - 1
Dudley -5 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 36 (8.98%) SAS
2 25 (6.23%) Confluence
3 16 (3.99%) Apache Airflow
4 9 (2.24%) SharePoint
5 5 (1.25%) Tuxedo
6 3 (0.75%) Apache
6 3 (0.75%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.25%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.25%) IIS
8 1 (0.25%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.25%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 8 (2.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.25%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (2.24%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (2.00%) ContrOCC
3 7 (1.75%) Oracle Receivables
4 6 (1.50%) Oracle General Ledger
4 6 (1.50%) Oracle Payables
5 5 (1.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 4 (1.00%) SAP PSCD
7 3 (0.75%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.50%) Oracle Payroll
9 1 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
9 1 (0.25%) Oracle Cash Management
9 1 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
9 1 (0.25%) Primavera
9 1 (0.25%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.25%) SAP HR
9 1 (0.25%) SAP Hybris
9 1 (0.25%) SAP IS-U
9 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
9 1 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 86 (21.45%) Azure
2 82 (20.45%) AWS
3 33 (8.23%) Azure DevOps
4 28 (6.98%) Power Platform
5 24 (5.99%) Power Automate
6 22 (5.49%) Dynamics 365
7 17 (4.24%) GitHub
8 14 (3.49%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 14 (3.49%) PowerApps
9 13 (3.24%) Amazon EC2
9 13 (3.24%) Amazon S3
9 13 (3.24%) Azure Data Factory
9 13 (3.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 11 (2.74%) Amazon SQS
10 11 (2.74%) AWS KMS
10 11 (2.74%) PaaS
10 11 (2.74%) Route 53
11 9 (2.24%) Serverless
12 8 (2.00%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (1.50%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.50%) Firewall
2 3 (0.75%) LAN
2 3 (0.75%) VPN
3 2 (0.50%) SSL
3 2 (0.50%) WAN
4 1 (0.25%) DNS
4 1 (0.25%) HTTPS
4 1 (0.25%) Internet
4 1 (0.25%) Network Security
4 1 (0.25%) SMTP
4 1 (0.25%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (6.48%) Data Warehouse
2 23 (5.74%) Pentaho
3 19 (4.74%) Oracle Database
4 18 (4.49%) SAS Visual Analytics
4 18 (4.49%) SQL Server
5 17 (4.24%) PostgreSQL
5 17 (4.24%) Power BI
5 17 (4.24%) SAS Enterprise Guide
6 12 (2.99%) Data Lake
6 12 (2.99%) Oracle Reports
7 11 (2.74%) Amazon Aurora
7 11 (2.74%) Amazon RDS
7 11 (2.74%) DynamoDB
7 11 (2.74%) Metadata
7 11 (2.74%) Relational Database
8 8 (2.00%) NoSQL
9 7 (1.75%) Ingres
10 6 (1.50%) RDBMS
10 6 (1.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 5 (1.25%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 38 (9.48%) JIRA
2 33 (8.23%) Git
3 31 (7.73%) Jenkins
4 22 (5.49%) GitLab
5 15 (3.74%) JUnit
6 14 (3.49%) Mockito
6 14 (3.49%) Selenium
6 14 (3.49%) SonarQube
7 13 (3.24%) Maven
7 13 (3.24%) Postman
8 10 (2.49%) WebDriver
9 9 (2.24%) Cypress.io
9 9 (2.24%) JMeter
10 8 (2.00%) Bitbucket Server
10 8 (2.00%) Cucumber
10 8 (2.00%) DbUnit
10 8 (2.00%) jMock
10 8 (2.00%) Team Foundation Server
11 5 (1.25%) Oracle Forms
12 3 (0.75%) Bitbucket
General
1 119 (29.68%) Social Skills
2 56 (13.97%) Analytical Skills
2 56 (13.97%) Finance
3 32 (7.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 31 (7.73%) Local Government
5 19 (4.74%) Influencing Skills
6 9 (2.24%) Military
7 8 (2.00%) Legal
7 8 (2.00%) Organisational Skills
7 8 (2.00%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (1.50%) Police
9 5 (1.25%) Telecoms
10 4 (1.00%) General Ledger
11 3 (0.75%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (0.75%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.50%) Banking
12 2 (0.50%) Law
12 2 (0.50%) Retail
13 1 (0.25%) Advertising
13 1 (0.25%) Billing
Job Titles
1 58 (14.46%) Senior
2 55 (13.72%) Developer
3 53 (13.22%) Architect
4 47 (11.72%) Analyst
5 45 (11.22%) Data Engineer
6 41 (10.22%) Lead
7 28 (6.98%) Data Architect
8 22 (5.49%) Business Analyst
9 20 (4.99%) Java Developer
10 14 (3.49%) Senior Developer
11 12 (2.99%) Release Manager
11 12 (2.99%) Senior Analyst
11 12 (2.99%) Test Analyst
12 11 (2.74%) DevOps Engineer
13 10 (2.49%) Dynamics 365 Developer
13 10 (2.49%) HR Director
13 10 (2.49%) Technical Architect
14 9 (2.24%) Scala Developer
14 9 (2.24%) Senior Java Developer
14 9 (2.24%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (4.74%) Oracle Fusion
1 19 (4.74%) SOAP
1 19 (4.74%) Spring
2 17 (4.24%) REST
2 17 (4.24%) Spring Boot
3 14 (3.49%) ActiveMQ
3 14 (3.49%) AngularJS
3 14 (3.49%) JSON
4 13 (3.24%) Hibernate
4 13 (3.24%) JPA
4 13 (3.24%) RESTful
5 12 (2.99%) Spring Cloud
5 12 (2.99%) Web Services
6 11 (2.74%) Spring Batch
6 11 (2.74%) Spring Integration
7 10 (2.49%) Gherkin
7 10 (2.49%) Terraform
8 8 (2.00%) Bootstrap
8 8 (2.00%) PowerMock
9 7 (1.75%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 31 (7.73%) Product Ownership
2 26 (6.48%) Cloud Native
3 17 (4.24%) Management Information System
4 15 (3.74%) Legacy Systems
5 12 (2.99%) Data Structures
6 11 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
7 8 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
9 6 (1.50%) Enterprise Cloud
9 6 (1.50%) Low-Code
9 6 (1.50%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.25%) BYOD
11 4 (1.00%) NHS
12 3 (0.75%) Autonomous Agent
12 3 (0.75%) Freedom of Information
12 3 (0.75%) Taxonomies
12 3 (0.75%) Virtual Team
13 2 (0.50%) AI Agents
13 2 (0.50%) Hybrid Cloud
13 2 (0.50%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 13 (3.24%) Linux
2 8 (2.00%) Unix
3 5 (1.25%) Windows
4 2 (0.50%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 203 (50.62%) Agile
2 106 (26.43%) DevOps
3 91 (22.69%) CI/CD
4 89 (22.19%) Continuous Improvement
5 87 (21.70%) Stakeholder Management
6 78 (19.45%) Analytics
7 74 (18.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 70 (17.46%) Migration
9 69 (17.21%) Scrum
10 62 (15.46%) Problem-Solving
11 55 (13.72%) Decision-Making
12 53 (13.22%) Data Modelling
13 51 (12.72%) Data Integration
14 46 (11.47%) ETL
15 41 (10.22%) Technical Leadership
16 37 (9.23%) AI
16 37 (9.23%) Digital Transformation Programme
16 37 (9.23%) SFIA
17 36 (8.98%) Microservices
17 36 (8.98%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 72 (17.96%) SQL
2 40 (9.98%) Java
3 21 (5.24%) Python
4 20 (4.99%) JavaScript
5 17 (4.24%) C#
6 13 (3.24%) Scala
7 10 (2.49%) PL/SQL
8 7 (1.75%) TypeScript
8 7 (1.75%) VB
8 7 (1.75%) VB6
9 5 (1.25%) C
10 4 (1.00%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.75%) ABAP
11 3 (0.75%) Bash
11 3 (0.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 3 (0.75%) R
12 2 (0.50%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.50%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.50%) ProC
12 2 (0.50%) VBA
Qualifications
1 186 (46.38%) Security Cleared
2 157 (39.15%) SC Cleared
3 59 (14.71%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (5.24%) Degree
5 17 (4.24%) Microsoft Certification
6 13 (3.24%) ISTQB
7 6 (1.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 5 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (1.00%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.00%) SAS Certification
10 3 (0.75%) ACCA
10 3 (0.75%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.75%) CCA
10 3 (0.75%) CCAB
10 3 (0.75%) CIMA
10 3 (0.75%) DV Cleared
11 2 (0.50%) APMG
11 2 (0.50%) CISM
11 2 (0.50%) CISSP
11 2 (0.50%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 40 (9.98%) QA
2 37 (9.23%) Data Quality
3 33 (8.23%) Accessibility
4 13 (3.24%) GDPR
4 13 (3.24%) WCAG
5 9 (2.24%) SLA
6 6 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (1.25%) GRC
7 5 (1.25%) PMO
8 4 (1.00%) NCSC
9 2 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 2 (0.50%) NIST
10 1 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.25%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 38 (9.48%) Docker
2 7 (1.75%) Postfix
3 4 (1.00%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.25%) etcd
4 1 (0.25%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.25%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 30 (7.48%) Kubernetes
2 17 (4.24%) Grafana
3 12 (2.99%) Prometheus
4 4 (1.00%) Ansible
5 2 (0.50%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.25%) CASB
6 1 (0.25%) Fluentd
6 1 (0.25%) FortiGate
6 1 (0.25%) SCCM
6 1 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 70 (17.46%) Oracle
2 43 (10.72%) Microsoft
3 23 (5.74%) Talend
4 15 (3.74%) Denodo
5 11 (2.74%) Atlassian
5 11 (2.74%) Databricks
5 11 (2.74%) Informatica
5 11 (2.74%) Jaspersoft
6 9 (2.24%) SAP
7 8 (2.00%) Dynatrace
7 8 (2.00%) Liquidlogic
8 5 (1.25%) Actian
9 4 (1.00%) Blue Prism
9 4 (1.00%) Pega
10 3 (0.75%) ServiceNow
10 3 (0.75%) Sparx
10 3 (0.75%) UiPath
11 2 (0.50%) Alteryx
11 2 (0.50%) MuleSoft
11 2 (0.50%) OneLogin