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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 16 20
Rank change year-on-year +6 +4 -8
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 406 164 129
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 11.81% 9.45% 6.78%
As % of the General category 22.46% 14.81% 12.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 310 108 88
10th Percentile £358 £254 £261
25th Percentile £425 £406 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year +3.84% +2.70% -8.64%
75th Percentile £575 £528 £550
90th Percentile £665 £588 £641
England median daily rate £525 £510 £520
% change year-on-year +2.94% -1.92% -3.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 4 10
10th Percentile £17.57 £16.16 £18.25
25th Percentile £20.31 £17.48 £18.50
Median hourly rate £21.50 £18.59 £30.03
Median % change year-on-year +15.67% -38.10% +58.04%
75th Percentile £75.00 £19.95 £35.00
90th Percentile - £22.12 £39.00
England median hourly rate £21.35 £21.39 £24.18
% change year-on-year -0.16% -11.56% +20.90%

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 1,808 1,107 1,061
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 52.59% 63.80% 55.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,119 699 695
10th Percentile £315 £220 £227
25th Percentile £408 £378 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £581 £575 £630
90th Percentile £675 £638 £750
England median daily rate £525 £503 £538
% change year-on-year +4.48% -6.51% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 142 85 68
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.00 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.57 £18.22 £15.10
Median hourly rate £27.30 £29.00 £20.30
Median % change year-on-year -5.86% +42.89% -11.22%
75th Percentile £43.63 £40.25 £31.55
90th Percentile £67.84 £50.00 £45.25
England median hourly rate £31.90 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +26.84% -34.02% +35.37%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 +8 195 £500 -2.91% 39
Birmingham -7 80 £525 +10.53% 115
Coventry +9 43 £425 -8.11% 7
Warwickshire -8 20 £450 +5.88% 8
Staffordshire +5 15 £850 +51.79% 7
Solihull -13 13 £492 +15.76% 2
Worcestershire +6 10 £450 -
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 34 (8.37%) SAS
2 24 (5.91%) Confluence
3 16 (3.94%) Apache Airflow
4 11 (2.71%) SharePoint
5 5 (1.23%) Tuxedo
6 3 (0.74%) Apache
6 3 (0.74%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.49%) 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 (1.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.49%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.25%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 11 (2.71%) Dynamics CRM
2 8 (1.97%) ContrOCC
3 7 (1.72%) Oracle Receivables
4 6 (1.48%) Oracle General Ledger
4 6 (1.48%) Oracle Payables
5 5 (1.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 4 (0.99%) SAP PSCD
7 3 (0.74%) SAP ERP
8 2 (0.49%) Oracle Payroll
9 1 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
9 1 (0.25%) Oracle Cash Management
9 1 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
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 87 (21.43%) Azure
2 82 (20.20%) AWS
3 36 (8.87%) Azure DevOps
4 31 (7.64%) Power Platform
5 28 (6.90%) Power Automate
6 25 (6.16%) Dynamics 365
7 18 (4.43%) GitHub
8 16 (3.94%) PowerApps
9 13 (3.20%) Azure Data Factory
9 13 (3.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 11 (2.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 11 (2.71%) PaaS
10 11 (2.71%) Serverless
11 10 (2.46%) Amazon EC2
11 10 (2.46%) Amazon S3
12 8 (1.97%) Amazon SQS
12 8 (1.97%) AWS KMS
12 8 (1.97%) Azure Functions
12 8 (1.97%) GitHub Actions
12 8 (1.97%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.23%) Firewall
2 3 (0.74%) VPN
3 2 (0.49%) LAN
3 2 (0.49%) SSL
3 2 (0.49%) WAN
4 1 (0.25%) DNS
4 1 (0.25%) HTTPS
4 1 (0.25%) Internet
4 1 (0.25%) SMTP
4 1 (0.25%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (6.16%) Data Warehouse
2 20 (4.93%) Pentaho
3 19 (4.68%) Oracle Database
3 19 (4.68%) SQL Server
4 18 (4.43%) SAS Visual Analytics
5 17 (4.19%) Power BI
5 17 (4.19%) SAS Enterprise Guide
6 13 (3.20%) PostgreSQL
7 12 (2.96%) Data Lake
8 11 (2.71%) Metadata
8 11 (2.71%) NoSQL
8 11 (2.71%) Oracle Reports
8 11 (2.71%) Relational Database
9 8 (1.97%) Amazon Aurora
9 8 (1.97%) Amazon RDS
9 8 (1.97%) DynamoDB
10 7 (1.72%) Ingres
10 7 (1.72%) MongoDB
11 6 (1.48%) RDBMS
11 6 (1.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 38 (9.36%) JIRA
2 33 (8.13%) Git
3 26 (6.40%) Jenkins
4 22 (5.42%) GitLab
5 15 (3.69%) Selenium
6 13 (3.20%) JUnit
6 13 (3.20%) Postman
7 12 (2.96%) SonarQube
8 11 (2.71%) Mockito
9 10 (2.46%) Maven
9 10 (2.46%) WebDriver
10 9 (2.22%) Cucumber
10 9 (2.22%) Cypress.io
10 9 (2.22%) JMeter
11 8 (1.97%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (1.48%) Bitbucket Server
12 6 (1.48%) DbUnit
12 6 (1.48%) jMock
13 5 (1.23%) Oracle Forms
14 3 (0.74%) Bitbucket
General
1 124 (30.54%) Social Skills
2 59 (14.53%) Finance
3 57 (14.04%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (8.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 30 (7.39%) Local Government
6 18 (4.43%) Influencing Skills
7 9 (2.22%) Military
8 8 (1.97%) Organisational Skills
9 7 (1.72%) Legal
9 7 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.48%) Police
11 5 (1.23%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.99%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.49%) Banking
13 2 (0.49%) Documentation Skills
13 2 (0.49%) Law
13 2 (0.49%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.49%) Retail
14 1 (0.25%) Advertising
14 1 (0.25%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 64 (15.76%) Developer
2 59 (14.53%) Senior
3 55 (13.55%) Architect
4 48 (11.82%) Analyst
5 43 (10.59%) Lead
6 41 (10.10%) Data Engineer
7 30 (7.39%) Data Architect
8 22 (5.42%) Business Analyst
9 18 (4.43%) Java Developer
10 15 (3.69%) Senior Developer
11 13 (3.20%) Dynamics 365 Developer
11 13 (3.20%) Test Analyst
12 12 (2.96%) Senior Analyst
13 11 (2.71%) DevOps Engineer
14 10 (2.46%) Designer
14 10 (2.46%) Front-End Developer (Client-Side Developer)
14 10 (2.46%) HR Director
14 10 (2.46%) Release Manager
14 10 (2.46%) Technical Architect
15 9 (2.22%) Senior Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (5.17%) REST
1 21 (5.17%) SOAP
2 20 (4.93%) Spring
3 18 (4.43%) Oracle Fusion
4 17 (4.19%) JSON
4 17 (4.19%) Spring Boot
5 11 (2.71%) ActiveMQ
5 11 (2.71%) Gherkin
5 11 (2.71%) RESTful
6 10 (2.46%) AngularJS
6 10 (2.46%) Hibernate
6 10 (2.46%) JPA
6 10 (2.46%) Kafka
6 10 (2.46%) Terraform
7 9 (2.22%) Spring Cloud
7 9 (2.22%) Web Services
8 8 (1.97%) React
8 8 (1.97%) Spring Batch
8 8 (1.97%) Spring Integration
8 8 (1.97%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 33 (8.13%) Product Ownership
2 28 (6.90%) Cloud Native
3 18 (4.43%) Management Information System
4 15 (3.69%) Legacy Systems
5 11 (2.71%) Data Structures
6 9 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
7 8 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.48%) Analytical Mindset
8 6 (1.48%) Enterprise Cloud
8 6 (1.48%) Low-Code
8 6 (1.48%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.23%) BYOD
9 5 (1.23%) Taxonomies
10 4 (0.99%) NHS
10 4 (0.99%) Virtual Team
11 3 (0.74%) Autonomous Agent
11 3 (0.74%) Freedom of Information
12 2 (0.49%) AI Agents
12 2 (0.49%) Legacy Applications
12 2 (0.49%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.71%) Linux
2 8 (1.97%) Unix
3 5 (1.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.49%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 213 (52.46%) Agile
2 107 (26.35%) DevOps
3 93 (22.91%) CI/CD
4 92 (22.66%) Continuous Improvement
5 88 (21.67%) Stakeholder Management
6 80 (19.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 78 (19.21%) Analytics
8 69 (17.00%) Migration
8 69 (17.00%) Scrum
9 65 (16.01%) Problem-Solving
10 54 (13.30%) Decision-Making
11 53 (13.05%) Data Modelling
12 51 (12.56%) Data Integration
13 43 (10.59%) Technical Leadership
14 42 (10.34%) ETL
15 40 (9.85%) Digital Transformation Programme
16 39 (9.61%) AI
16 39 (9.61%) SFIA
16 39 (9.61%) Test Automation
17 37 (9.11%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 65 (16.01%) SQL
2 39 (9.61%) Java
3 30 (7.39%) JavaScript
4 21 (5.17%) Python
5 19 (4.68%) C#
6 13 (3.20%) Scala
7 9 (2.22%) PL/SQL
8 7 (1.72%) TypeScript
8 7 (1.72%) VB
8 7 (1.72%) VB6
9 5 (1.23%) C
10 4 (0.99%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.74%) ABAP
11 3 (0.74%) Bash
11 3 (0.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 3 (0.74%) R
12 2 (0.49%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.49%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.49%) ProC
12 2 (0.49%) VBA
Qualifications
1 184 (45.32%) Security Cleared
2 157 (38.67%) SC Cleared
3 67 (16.50%) BPSS Clearance
4 21 (5.17%) Degree
5 19 (4.68%) Microsoft Certification
6 13 (3.20%) ISTQB
7 6 (1.48%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 5 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (0.99%) SAS Certification
10 3 (0.74%) ACCA
10 3 (0.74%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.74%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.74%) CCA
10 3 (0.74%) CCAB
10 3 (0.74%) CIMA
10 3 (0.74%) CISM
10 3 (0.74%) CISSP
10 3 (0.74%) DV Cleared
11 2 (0.49%) APMG
11 2 (0.49%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (10.34%) QA
2 40 (9.85%) Accessibility
3 36 (8.87%) Data Quality
4 18 (4.43%) WCAG
5 15 (3.69%) GDPR
6 9 (2.22%) SLA
7 7 (1.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (1.23%) GRC
8 5 (1.23%) PMO
9 4 (0.99%) NCSC
10 2 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.49%) NIST
11 1 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.25%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 33 (8.13%) Docker
2 5 (1.23%) Postfix
3 4 (0.99%) 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 28 (6.90%) Kubernetes
2 14 (3.45%) Grafana
3 11 (2.71%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.99%) Ansible
5 2 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.25%) CASB
6 1 (0.25%) Fluentd
6 1 (0.25%) SCCM
6 1 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 67 (16.50%) Oracle
2 44 (10.84%) Microsoft
3 20 (4.93%) Talend
4 13 (3.20%) Denodo
5 11 (2.71%) Databricks
6 10 (2.46%) Informatica
7 9 (2.22%) Atlassian
7 9 (2.22%) SAP
8 8 (1.97%) Dynatrace
8 8 (1.97%) Jaspersoft
8 8 (1.97%) Liquidlogic
8 8 (1.97%) ServiceNow
9 5 (1.23%) Actian
10 4 (0.99%) Blue Prism
10 4 (0.99%) Pega
11 3 (0.74%) Sparx
11 3 (0.74%) UiPath
12 2 (0.49%) Alteryx
12 2 (0.49%) MuleSoft
12 2 (0.49%) OneLogin