A report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce indicates that a growing number of workers are abandoning traditional employment for alternative arrangements:
20 million workers are telecommuters and 10.3 million are independent contractors.The latter are now 7.4 % of the workforce. More flexibility, more income potential and more work/life balance are the driving trends. Sounds familiar? Well, if you're an IT contractor then it certainly should, as at least 10% of all temporary and contractor workers are in IT occupations (here's the quick math: that would be about 1 million independent contractors in the US!)
We heard that one of the reasons why people turn to contracting is the higher income potential...but are the facts there to back this up? The facts actually show that mostly staffing agencies have reaped the monetary benefits of this trend: U.S. temporary and contract staffing sales for 2005 totaled $69.5 billion, according to the ASA quarterly employment and sales survey, 8.5% more than in the previous year and about $4 billion more than the industry’s prior high points in 2000 and 2004.
This blog is about what companies and IT contractors have in common, and about ways to allow them to share their common interests...without third party intervention. Watch for the next post as I ask about ways that you source your contractors...or the price you pay for them!
2 comments:
Hi Massimo,
Good first post! It would seem that with 1 million IT contractors, the recruiting firms could make an "efficient market" in contracting services. But the opposite almost seems to be true. The firms can take whatever sort of cut they want and there is little transparency regarding rates. Maybe you could comment on that topic sometime?
Well, it's now 3 years later and it's even worse: because of reduced volumes of placements, the agencies have boosted their already high margins to astronomical levels.
They're taking advantage of the difficult labor market and reducing the rates to the contractor.
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