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 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 17 20 13
Rank change year-on-year +3 -7 -9
Contract jobs citing Public Sector 220 140 189
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.29% 7.43% 9.85%
As % of the General category 16.70% 12.94% 18.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 150 83 131
10th Percentile £299 £286 £200
25th Percentile £406 £399 £369
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.50% - -
75th Percentile £537 £550 £619
90th Percentile £600 £613 £700
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 8 14
10th Percentile £17.70 £14.70 £15.25
25th Percentile £21.43 £21.38 £17.06
Median hourly rate £23.03 £30.03 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.32% +58.04% +7.59%
75th Percentile £25.00 £40.56 £41.88
90th Percentile £40.68 £62.58 £69.63
England median hourly rate £21.30 £24.09 £21.31
% change year-on-year -11.56% +13.02% +12.16%

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 common skills in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 1,317 1,082 1,006
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 61.63% 57.43% 52.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 840 655 687
10th Percentile £250 £211 £220
25th Percentile £400 £363 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.50% - -
75th Percentile £575 £624 £623
90th Percentile £650 £725 £725
England median daily rate £500 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -5.66% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 52 45
10th Percentile £14.00 £13.00 £15.17
25th Percentile £17.14 £15.30 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.58 £23.82 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.37% +28.76% +4.99%
75th Percentile £35.60 £30.83 £34.50
90th Percentile £50.00 £42.88 £63.25
England median hourly rate £24.61 £31.97 £32.32
% change year-on-year -23.02% -1.08% +25.71%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025. 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
Birmingham +11 96 £475 -5.00% 38
Shropshire -14 44 £519 +0.68% 10
Warwickshire +11 33 £500 -8.51% 4
Coventry 0 21 £435 -17.14% 5
Worcestershire -17 5 £363 +13.73%
Solihull -1 4 £425 +12.58% 7
Staffordshire -4 2 £588 +17.50% 10
Herefordshire -14 1 - - 2
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 28 (12.73%) Confluence
2 18 (8.18%) SAS
3 10 (4.55%) nginx
4 6 (2.73%) SharePoint
5 5 (2.27%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (1.36%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.91%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.91%) SugarCRM
8 1 (0.45%) Apache
8 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.45%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 9 (4.09%) Mozilla Thunderbird
2 8 (3.64%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (3.18%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (2.73%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (2.27%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.91%) Adobe Illustrator
6 2 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.91%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 1 (0.45%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 3 (1.36%) SAP ERP
1 3 (1.36%) SAP HR
2 2 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.91%) SAP FI
2 2 (0.91%) SAP PSCD
3 1 (0.45%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.45%) Oracle HRMS
3 1 (0.45%) Primavera
3 1 (0.45%) SAP PM
Cloud Services
1 54 (24.55%) AWS
2 43 (19.55%) Azure
3 27 (12.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 27 (12.27%) Amazon S3
4 26 (11.82%) AWS KMS
5 25 (11.36%) Amazon EC2
6 23 (10.45%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 21 (9.55%) Amazon ELB
8 13 (5.91%) Power Platform
8 13 (5.91%) Route 53
9 12 (5.45%) Amazon Glacier
9 12 (5.45%) Microsoft 365
10 10 (4.55%) Amazon ECS
11 7 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
12 6 (2.73%) GitHub
12 6 (2.73%) PaaS
13 5 (2.27%) Amazon SQS
13 5 (2.27%) Azure Data Factory
13 5 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
13 5 (2.27%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 31 (14.09%) Firewall
2 26 (11.82%) DNS
3 21 (9.55%) FTP
3 21 (9.55%) HTTP
3 21 (9.55%) SMTP
3 21 (9.55%) SSH
4 12 (5.45%) VPN
4 12 (5.45%) WAN
5 9 (4.09%) IMAP
5 9 (4.09%) OpenLDAP
6 8 (3.64%) IPsec
7 7 (3.18%) BGP
7 7 (3.18%) MPLS
8 6 (2.73%) Wireless
9 4 (1.82%) LAN
9 4 (1.82%) SD-WAN
10 3 (1.36%) Junos
10 3 (1.36%) Network Security
11 2 (0.91%) Cisco IPT
11 2 (0.91%) DMVPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (11.82%) Amazon RDS
2 16 (7.27%) PostgreSQL
3 13 (5.91%) Amazon Aurora
4 11 (5.00%) Power BI
5 10 (4.55%) SAS Enterprise Guide
6 9 (4.09%) Oracle Database
7 8 (3.64%) Pentaho
8 6 (2.73%) SAS Visual Analytics
9 4 (1.82%) DynamoDB
10 3 (1.36%) DataStage
10 3 (1.36%) MySQL
11 2 (0.91%) Data Hub
11 2 (0.91%) Metadata
11 2 (0.91%) MongoDB
11 2 (0.91%) Oracle Database 12c
11 2 (0.91%) QlikView
11 2 (0.91%) Relational Database
11 2 (0.91%) SAP BW
12 1 (0.45%) Amazon Athena
12 1 (0.45%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 41 (18.64%) JIRA
2 40 (18.18%) Git
3 38 (17.27%) Jenkins
4 21 (9.55%) Vagrant
5 5 (2.27%) JUnit
6 4 (1.82%) Bitbucket Server
6 4 (1.82%) DbUnit
6 4 (1.82%) GitLab
6 4 (1.82%) jMock
6 4 (1.82%) Maven
6 4 (1.82%) Mockito
6 4 (1.82%) SonarQube
7 3 (1.36%) Toad
8 2 (0.91%) Selenium
9 1 (0.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.45%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.45%) NUnit
9 1 (0.45%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.45%) PVCS
9 1 (0.45%) TestPartner
General
1 63 (28.64%) Social Skills
2 21 (9.55%) Finance
3 14 (6.36%) Analytical Skills
4 13 (5.91%) Presentation Skills
5 11 (5.00%) Telecoms
6 8 (3.64%) Manufacturing
7 7 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
8 6 (2.73%) Influencing Skills
9 5 (2.27%) Electronics
9 5 (2.27%) Marketing
10 3 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (1.36%) Legal
10 3 (1.36%) Local Government
10 3 (1.36%) Military
10 3 (1.36%) Police
11 2 (0.91%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.91%) Law
11 2 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
12 1 (0.45%) Banking
12 1 (0.45%) Retail
Job Titles
1 31 (14.09%) Analyst
2 30 (13.64%) Developer
3 26 (11.82%) DevOps Engineer
4 19 (8.64%) AWS Engineer
5 17 (7.73%) AWS DevOps
5 17 (7.73%) AWS DevOps Engineer
5 17 (7.73%) Platform Engineer
6 16 (7.27%) Cloud Platform Engineer
7 15 (6.82%) Lead
8 13 (5.91%) Architect
8 13 (5.91%) Senior
9 12 (5.45%) Consultant
10 10 (4.55%) Network Engineer
11 9 (4.09%) AWS Platform Engineer
11 9 (4.09%) Business Analyst
12 8 (3.64%) DevOps Platform Engineer
12 8 (3.64%) Release Manager
12 8 (3.64%) Support Engineer
13 7 (3.18%) Data Engineer
13 7 (3.18%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (5.00%) LDAP
1 11 (5.00%) REST
2 10 (4.55%) RESTful
3 9 (4.09%) .NET
4 7 (3.18%) SOAP
5 6 (2.73%) AngularJS
5 6 (2.73%) CSS
5 6 (2.73%) React
5 6 (2.73%) Spring
5 6 (2.73%) Web Services
5 6 (2.73%) XML
6 5 (2.27%) .NET Framework
6 5 (2.27%) Spring Boot
7 4 (1.82%) ActiveMQ
7 4 (1.82%) Bootstrap
7 4 (1.82%) Hibernate
7 4 (1.82%) JPA
7 4 (1.82%) PowerMock
7 4 (1.82%) Spring Batch
7 4 (1.82%) Spring Integration
Miscellaneous
1 22 (10.00%) Replication
2 8 (3.64%) Management Information System
3 7 (3.18%) PKI
4 6 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
4 6 (2.73%) Onboarding
5 5 (2.27%) Cloud Native
5 5 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (1.82%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.82%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (0.91%) Data Structures
8 2 (0.91%) Driving Licence
8 2 (0.91%) Educational Technology
8 2 (0.91%) Graphic Design
8 2 (0.91%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (0.91%) Product Ownership
8 2 (0.91%) Public Cloud
8 2 (0.91%) Security Operations Centre
8 2 (0.91%) Security Posture
8 2 (0.91%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 38 (17.27%) Linux
2 37 (16.82%) Windows
3 22 (10.00%) Amazon Linux
4 21 (9.55%) VMS
5 10 (4.55%) Ubuntu
6 4 (1.82%) Unix
7 2 (0.91%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.91%) Windows Server
8 1 (0.45%) Mac OS X
8 1 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 62 (28.18%) DevOps
2 54 (24.55%) Agile
3 43 (19.55%) CI/CD
4 40 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
5 32 (14.55%) Configuration Management
6 29 (13.18%) Analytics
6 29 (13.18%) Change Management
7 23 (10.45%) Cloud Security
7 23 (10.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 22 (10.00%) Migration
8 22 (10.00%) Patch Management
8 22 (10.00%) Platform Engineering
9 21 (9.55%) Business Intelligence
9 21 (9.55%) Stakeholder Management
10 20 (9.09%) Scrum
11 19 (8.64%) Continuous Improvement
12 16 (7.27%) Containerisation
12 16 (7.27%) Data Modelling
12 16 (7.27%) Test Automation
13 14 (6.36%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 39 (17.73%) SQL
2 34 (15.45%) Python
3 31 (14.09%) Java
4 26 (11.82%) PowerShell
5 22 (10.00%) Groovy
6 13 (5.91%) Perl
7 11 (5.00%) JavaScript
8 6 (2.73%) TypeScript
9 5 (2.27%) C#
9 5 (2.27%) Scala
10 4 (1.82%) ABAP
11 3 (1.36%) Bash
11 3 (1.36%) PHP
11 3 (1.36%) PL/SQL
12 2 (0.91%) Go
13 1 (0.45%) Apex Code
13 1 (0.45%) C++
13 1 (0.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.45%) R
13 1 (0.45%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 128 (58.18%) Security Cleared
2 76 (34.55%) SC Cleared
3 15 (6.82%) Degree
4 13 (5.91%) AWS Certification
4 13 (5.91%) DV Cleared
5 12 (5.45%) Azure Certification
6 3 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.36%) Microsoft Certification
6 3 (1.36%) PMP
7 2 (0.91%) ACCA
7 2 (0.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (0.91%) CCA
7 2 (0.91%) CCNP
7 2 (0.91%) CIMA
7 2 (0.91%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (0.91%) DBS Check
7 2 (0.91%) OCP
7 2 (0.91%) Oracle Certification
7 2 (0.91%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (5.91%) QA
2 9 (4.09%) Data Quality
3 7 (3.18%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.82%) SLA
5 3 (1.36%) GDPR
5 3 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.91%) NIST
6 2 (0.91%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.91%) WCAG
7 1 (0.45%) FIPS 140-2
7 1 (0.45%) NCSC
System Software
1 44 (20.00%) Docker
2 21 (9.55%) DFS Replication
3 20 (9.09%) Active Directory
4 13 (5.91%) Postfix
5 9 (4.09%) Dovecot
5 9 (4.09%) Squid
6 5 (2.27%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.91%) Oracle RAC
7 2 (0.91%) vSphere
8 1 (0.45%) Terminal Services
8 1 (0.45%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 32 (14.55%) Terraform
2 28 (12.73%) Prometheus
3 27 (12.27%) Grafana
4 18 (8.18%) Kubernetes
5 9 (4.09%) Nessus
5 9 (4.09%) Proxmox
6 3 (1.36%) Ansible
7 2 (0.91%) Data Guard
7 2 (0.91%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 2 (0.91%) Oracle RMAN
7 2 (0.91%) SCCM
7 2 (0.91%) vRealize
7 2 (0.91%) VxRail
8 1 (0.45%) CASB
8 1 (0.45%) EMC NetWorker
8 1 (0.45%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.45%) QRadar
8 1 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 34 (15.45%) Oracle
2 23 (10.45%) ServiceNow
3 21 (9.55%) Microsoft
4 14 (6.36%) SAP
5 13 (5.91%) Jaspersoft
6 11 (5.00%) Cisco
6 11 (5.00%) Juniper
7 9 (4.09%) Talend
8 7 (3.18%) Denodo
8 7 (3.18%) IBM
9 6 (2.73%) Ariba
9 6 (2.73%) VMware
10 5 (2.27%) Splunk
11 4 (1.82%) Atlassian
11 4 (1.82%) F5
12 3 (1.36%) AppDynamics
12 3 (1.36%) Commvault
12 3 (1.36%) CyberArk
12 3 (1.36%) Salesforce
12 3 (1.36%) SolarWinds