IT contractors and the city - what’s the score?

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/06/30/231282/it-contractors-in-financial-services-upbeat-despite.htm

IT contractors are not expecting a cull in the financial services sector despite the economic slowdown.

According to research from contractor services provider giant group, IT contractors believe that any job cuts in the financial services sector over the next 12 months will not come close to the levels of those in 2001, the last downturn.

The research shows that the proportion of IT contractors expecting the best job opportunities in the financial services sector has fallen only slightly over the last 12 months, from 26% of all contractors to 24%.

Contractors are still most confident of job creation in the financial services sector compared with other sectors of the economy.

Financial organisations have managed their IT skills much more efficiently since the last downturn, according to giant group, “leaving less fat to trim this time around”, so the expectation of mass lay-offs is more subdued.

Check out this article talking about contractors viewpoints of the market in the financial sector in relation to the recent ‘economic slowdown’. It’s an interesting read, do check it out, dependent on your role, your area of expertise you can either benefit from a downturn - keeping those legacy systems in operation, or deploying that new solution to reduce your operation costs over so many years.

I still wonder about the ‘economic slowdown’, that word, that phrase can mean so many things to so many people. Certainly from an IT contractor viewpoint, from a purely business one, is what we’re seeing not a re-brand, a change in the way the money is being spent? That capital investment projects might be reduced, but the ‘business as usual’, those projects that we need to deploy are still deployed. I might hold off on my Windows 2008 upgrade project, but I still need to implement that new EMC storage, to accommodate those new storage requirements, that blade solution to improve revenues or limit risk. We’ll see, do check it out.