Wed, 27 Aug 2014In tune with a record growth in professional services job offerings, as Recruiter reported yesterday, optimism is high in several contracting sectors.

Giant group, the professional umbrella employment provider, found the market for contractors, particularly in education, IT and engineering, had returned to pre-recession levels.

The group’s latest analysis compared current contractor sentiment to its ‘Temporary Recruitment Market Report’, which analysed the healthcare, finance, IT, engineering and education sectors in 2013.

It found 93% of contractors in engineering, 86% in education and two-thirds of those in IT predicted their earnings would increase or stay the same over the coming year.

It also found IT contractors were predicting more job opportunities, with many appearing in the financial services sector, partly attributable to new regulations.

For education contractors, the addition of new subjects to the school curriculum was behind much of the demand. Increased investment in infrastructure projects was believed to be driving demand for engineers, giant group managing director Matthew Brown said in a statement.

He noted a shifting significance of job security within IT: “Pre-recession, contractors were selecting this as by far their most important factor in choosing a role; however, professionals are now seeing increased opportunities in the market and want to secure the best rates as a result.”