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 30 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 20 16
Rank change year-on-year +6 -4 -7
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 364 115 151
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.86% 7.75% 7.36%
As % of the General category 20.44% 12.46% 13.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 269 68 113
10th Percentile £350 £271 £300
25th Percentile £425 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £469 £475
Median % change year-on-year +6.67% -1.32% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £532 £565
90th Percentile £663 £638 £648
England median daily rate £513 £513 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.38% -
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% -6.17%
75th Percentile £75.00 £18.70 £34.73
90th Percentile - £18.72 £39.00
England median hourly rate £22.50 £25.08 £26.50
% change year-on-year -10.27% -5.38% +27.28%

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 1,781 923 1,100
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 53.13% 62.20% 53.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,149 572 745
10th Percentile £313 £193 £250
25th Percentile £402 £350 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £460 £505
Median % change year-on-year +6.96% -8.91% -1.46%
75th Percentile £588 £550 £625
90th Percentile £686 £661 £750
England median daily rate £525 £519 £535
% change year-on-year +1.16% -2.99% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 77 123
10th Percentile £16.07 £14.00 £11.38
25th Percentile £20.31 £16.00 £13.69
Median hourly rate £30.27 £25.00 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.08% +31.58% -15.39%
75th Percentile £47.50 £34.98 £33.11
90th Percentile £75.00 £50.00 £56.00
England median hourly rate £32.50 £27.50 £32.70
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.90% +8.99%

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 30 June 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 30 June 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 30 June 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 +8 128 £486 +6.01% 18
Birmingham -1 89 £525 +5.00% 30
Warwickshire +13 43 £550 +29.41% 10
Coventry +2 29 £495 +20.00%
Solihull -9 22 £402 -4.29%
Staffordshire +9 13 £420 -25.00% 13
Worcestershire +1 7 - -
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 (9.07%) SAS
2 20 (5.49%) Confluence
3 16 (4.40%) Apache Airflow
4 11 (3.02%) SharePoint
5 5 (1.37%) Tuxedo
6 2 (0.55%) Apache
6 2 (0.55%) Apache Spark
6 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.55%) 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 6 (1.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.27%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (1.92%) ContrOCC
2 5 (1.37%) Oracle Receivables
3 4 (1.10%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (1.10%) Oracle General Ledger
3 4 (1.10%) Oracle Payables
3 4 (1.10%) SAP PSCD
4 3 (0.82%) NEC Housing
4 3 (0.82%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.82%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.55%) Maximo
5 2 (0.55%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.27%) Primavera
6 1 (0.27%) SAP BRIM
6 1 (0.27%) SAP HR
6 1 (0.27%) SAP Hybris
6 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 88 (24.18%) AWS
2 65 (17.86%) Azure
3 20 (5.49%) Amazon S3
4 19 (5.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 19 (5.22%) Amazon EC2
5 17 (4.67%) Amazon SQS
5 17 (4.67%) AWS KMS
5 17 (4.67%) Route 53
6 16 (4.40%) Azure DevOps
7 15 (4.12%) Power Platform
8 14 (3.85%) GitHub
9 10 (2.75%) PaaS
10 9 (2.47%) Power Automate
11 8 (2.20%) Microsoft 365
12 7 (1.92%) Dynamics 365
12 7 (1.92%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (1.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 6 (1.65%) Entra ID
14 5 (1.37%) GitHub Copilot
14 5 (1.37%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.92%) Firewall
2 4 (1.10%) VPN
3 3 (0.82%) LAN
3 3 (0.82%) WAN
4 2 (0.55%) 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 (6.04%) PostgreSQL
2 20 (5.49%) Pentaho
3 19 (5.22%) Amazon RDS
4 17 (4.67%) Amazon Aurora
4 17 (4.67%) DynamoDB
4 17 (4.67%) Oracle Database
4 17 (4.67%) Oracle Reports
5 16 (4.40%) SAS Enterprise Guide
5 16 (4.40%) SAS Visual Analytics
6 14 (3.85%) SQL Server
7 13 (3.57%) Data Warehouse
8 12 (3.30%) Power BI
9 9 (2.47%) Relational Database
10 7 (1.92%) Ingres
11 6 (1.65%) Metadata
11 6 (1.65%) RDBMS
12 5 (1.37%) BusinessObjects
12 5 (1.37%) MongoDB
13 4 (1.10%) Base SAS
13 4 (1.10%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 31 (8.52%) Git
1 31 (8.52%) Jenkins
2 29 (7.97%) JIRA
3 19 (5.22%) JUnit
4 18 (4.95%) GitLab
5 17 (4.67%) Maven
5 17 (4.67%) Mockito
5 17 (4.67%) SonarQube
6 13 (3.57%) DbUnit
6 13 (3.57%) jMock
7 11 (3.02%) Bitbucket Server
8 10 (2.75%) JMeter
9 9 (2.47%) Selenium
10 7 (1.92%) Postman
11 6 (1.65%) Team Foundation Server
12 5 (1.37%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (1.37%) WebDriver
13 4 (1.10%) Cucumber
13 4 (1.10%) Cypress.io
14 3 (0.82%) REST Assured
General
1 102 (28.02%) Social Skills
2 53 (14.56%) Finance
3 50 (13.74%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (9.07%) Local Government
5 17 (4.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 15 (4.12%) Legal
6 15 (4.12%) Police
7 10 (2.75%) Influencing Skills
8 6 (1.65%) Presentation Skills
9 4 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.10%) General Ledger
9 4 (1.10%) Law
9 4 (1.10%) Military
9 4 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.10%) Telecoms
10 3 (0.82%) Manufacturing
11 2 (0.55%) Publishing
12 1 (0.27%) Aerospace
12 1 (0.27%) Automotive
12 1 (0.27%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 51 (14.01%) Senior
2 46 (12.64%) Architect
3 43 (11.81%) Developer
4 35 (9.62%) Analyst
5 32 (8.79%) Data Engineer
6 27 (7.42%) Java Developer
7 25 (6.87%) Lead
8 19 (5.22%) Business Analyst
9 15 (4.12%) Technical Architect
10 13 (3.57%) Accountant
10 13 (3.57%) Release Manager
10 13 (3.57%) Systems Accountant
11 12 (3.30%) Data Architect
12 11 (3.02%) Senior Accountant
12 11 (3.02%) Senior Systems Accountant
13 10 (2.75%) Applications Support
13 10 (2.75%) Consultant
13 10 (2.75%) DevOps Engineer
13 10 (2.75%) Senior Developer
13 10 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (6.32%) Spring
1 23 (6.32%) Spring Boot
2 22 (6.04%) REST
3 21 (5.77%) SOAP
4 19 (5.22%) AngularJS
5 18 (4.95%) Oracle Fusion
6 17 (4.67%) ActiveMQ
6 17 (4.67%) Hibernate
6 17 (4.67%) JPA
6 17 (4.67%) Spring Batch
6 17 (4.67%) Spring Integration
6 17 (4.67%) Web Services
7 16 (4.40%) Spring Cloud
8 13 (3.57%) PowerMock
8 13 (3.57%) RESTful
9 12 (3.30%) Node.js
10 11 (3.02%) Bootstrap
11 7 (1.92%) JSON
12 6 (1.65%) ADO
12 6 (1.65%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 25 (6.87%) Product Ownership
2 19 (5.22%) Management Information System
3 15 (4.12%) Cloud Native
3 15 (4.12%) Distributed Systems
4 14 (3.85%) Data Structures
5 11 (3.02%) Legacy Systems
6 8 (2.20%) Analytical Mindset
7 7 (1.92%) NHS
8 6 (1.65%) Enterprise Cloud
8 6 (1.65%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
9 5 (1.37%) Low-Code
10 3 (0.82%) Freedom of Information
11 2 (0.55%) BYOD
11 2 (0.55%) Hybrid Cloud
11 2 (0.55%) PKI
11 2 (0.55%) Private Cloud
11 2 (0.55%) Reference Data
11 2 (0.55%) SCADA
11 2 (0.55%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 17 (4.67%) Linux
2 7 (1.92%) Unix
3 5 (1.37%) Windows
4 2 (0.55%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 151 (41.48%) Agile
2 77 (21.15%) DevOps
3 71 (19.51%) Stakeholder Management
4 66 (18.13%) CI/CD
5 62 (17.03%) Migration
6 59 (16.21%) Continuous Improvement
7 50 (13.74%) Analytics
8 48 (13.19%) Scrum
9 47 (12.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 46 (12.64%) Decision-Making
11 43 (11.81%) Data Integration
12 38 (10.44%) Data Modelling
13 32 (8.79%) ETL
13 32 (8.79%) Problem-Solving
14 31 (8.52%) Containerisation
15 29 (7.97%) Project Delivery
15 29 (7.97%) Validation
16 28 (7.69%) Microservices
16 28 (7.69%) Test Automation
17 27 (7.42%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 79 (21.70%) SQL
2 40 (10.99%) Java
3 16 (4.40%) Python
4 13 (3.57%) PL/SQL
5 8 (2.20%) JavaScript
6 7 (1.92%) C#
7 5 (1.37%) Bash
7 5 (1.37%) C
7 5 (1.37%) VB
7 5 (1.37%) VB6
8 3 (0.82%) ABAP
9 2 (0.55%) Bicep
9 2 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 2 (0.55%) ProC
9 2 (0.55%) Scala
9 2 (0.55%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.27%) Kotlin
10 1 (0.27%) PowerShell
10 1 (0.27%) R
10 1 (0.27%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 176 (48.35%) Security Cleared
2 137 (37.64%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.14%) BPSS Clearance
4 17 (4.67%) Degree
5 6 (1.65%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (1.37%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.37%) Azure Certification
6 5 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.37%) ISTQB
7 4 (1.10%) SAS Certification
8 3 (0.82%) ACCA
8 3 (0.82%) CCA
8 3 (0.82%) CCAB
8 3 (0.82%) CIMA
8 3 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (0.82%) CISM
8 3 (0.82%) CISSP
8 3 (0.82%) DV Cleared
8 3 (0.82%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.55%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 24 (6.59%) QA
3 21 (5.77%) Accessibility
4 9 (2.47%) WCAG
5 8 (2.20%) GDPR
5 8 (2.20%) SLA
6 5 (1.37%) PMO
7 4 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.55%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.55%) GRC
8 2 (0.55%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.27%) COBIT
9 1 (0.27%) NCSC
9 1 (0.27%) NIST
9 1 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 37 (10.16%) Docker
2 11 (3.02%) Postfix
3 6 (1.65%) 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 (7.14%) Kubernetes
2 20 (5.49%) Grafana
3 9 (2.47%) Prometheus
3 9 (2.47%) Terraform
4 5 (1.37%) Ansible
5 2 (0.55%) 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 71 (19.51%) Oracle
2 29 (7.97%) Microsoft
3 23 (6.32%) Talend
4 17 (4.67%) Jaspersoft
5 15 (4.12%) Atlassian
5 15 (4.12%) Informatica
6 10 (2.75%) Denodo
6 10 (2.75%) SAP
7 9 (2.47%) Databricks
8 7 (1.92%) Dynatrace
8 7 (1.92%) Liquidlogic
9 6 (1.65%) ServiceNow
10 5 (1.37%) Actian
10 5 (1.37%) Cloudera
10 5 (1.37%) Pega
11 3 (0.82%) NEC
11 3 (0.82%) Salesforce
11 3 (0.82%) Sparx
12 2 (0.55%) Google
12 2 (0.55%) Splunk