The Brisbane IT&T market remains challenging for both contractors and permanents.

The key driver in the IT contractor market is currently the State Government.

A majority of government agencies have been affected by limited resource allocations across a number of IT projects in addition to other agencies undergoing major re-deployments.

We are seeing a strengthening in demand (compared to the soft market during April and May) for both contractor and permanent vacancies.

The Canberra market however remains relatively flat (in terms of both overall job and salary levels) compared with other markets, notably Sydney.

The impact of the Global Financial Crisis and departmental responses to the Gershon Report’s recommendations around the use of contractors contributed to an overall reduction in the number of engaged contractors of more than 15% at the end of June.

Over the last few months we have seen a decline in contract and permanent demand across the Melbourne market as hiring decisions slowed and projects came under the spotlight with some departments reprioritising major projects to minimise spend.

We are now seeing demand stabilise in both contract and permanent requirements entering July.

Contracting is still the preferred option for most clients due to its flexible and scalable nature, while permanent hiring has increased slightly in the last few months.

While the effect of the Global Financial Crisis in the Perth IT&T market was delayed in comparison to other Australian cities, recent local market strengthening has coincided with similar improvements in other capital cities.

Demand for contractors has strengthened to pre-December 2008 levels. Driving the demand is a combination of new budgets and existing projects now being restarted with the start of
a new financial year.

The Sydney market for IT&T contractors is being buoyed by several well publicised major projects including the core systems upgrades at the major banks.

We have also recently witnessed some strengthening in demand for permanent staff.

Whilst demand for permanent staff is still well below the levels experienced in the first half of 2008, we expect continuing improvement during 2009.