[LRUG] The state of contracting market survey

[Thayer Prime]

This is brilliant: good to see some real data on what we're all
feeling, and your interpretation of it to help understand it quickly.
Thanks for doing this, and publishing it. Sad to see the state of the
market just now. Here's hoping the next one in five years shows a
different story! Though, I suspect it may not...

On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 10:24 AM Tadas via Chat <chat at lists.lrug.org> wrote:
>
> Happy Monday LRUG,
>
> Sun's out, 2025 contracting market survey results are out!
>
> A HUGE thank you to everyone who's responded! 160+ people from UK IT Contractors discord, LRUG and /r/ContractorUK.
>
> You can find the summary, as well as links to raw data on GitHub here: https://github.com/tadast/switching-to-contracting-uk/blob/master/surveys/2025.md
>
> Feel free to analyze, interpret and discuss the results. My takeaway is that it's looking rather gloomy, and the consensus seems to be IR35 reform and interest rates are to blame (no surprise here). But most of the contractors are determined to continue, despite it being harder than before, and it's not because of the money contracting brings - I was pleased to see most would still choose an outside IR35 contract over the same take-home pay in a permanent role - seems like a very conscious lifestyle choice rather than something influenced by financials.
>
> If you want to benchmark how you're doing against the rest of the market when it comes to recruiter outreach, downtime, daily-rate, number of clients - you should be able to in the average/mean tables or by looking at the raw data (linked in the results).
>
> What are your thoughts?
>
> On Tue, 29 Apr 2025 at 09:41, Tadas <tadastamo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hello LRUG,
>>
>> I am Tadas, the person behind Switching to Contracting in the UK Guide, UK IT Contractors Discord community, a long-time rubyist and a contractor.
>>
>> Recently, I’ve noticed an uptick in interest in switching to contracting, but at the same time, others are moving to permanent roles in search of stability. Everybody's asking "what's the market like?", but nobody has data. Let's fix that!
>>
>> There has also been some talk here on LRUG list, prompted by accidental reply-all responses providing a glimpse into daily rates, which makes me think that there is a lot of interest in this topic.
>>
>> So if you've contracted in the last 12 months, please take a few minutes to fill out this anonymous survey. Feel free to share in other relevant communities or your personal circles!
>>
>> https://forms.gle/qXsUAczBLh94aZGB7
>>
>> I'll share the results in a follow-up post on LRUG once we have enough data.
>>
>> Thanks!
>> --
>> Tadas Tamo
>> Contractor/Product Engineer
>> Join my Discord community for UK Contractors
>
>
>
> --
> Tadas
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-- 
Thayer Prime
--------------------
CEO & Founder
Team Prime Ltd
http://www.team-prime.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/thayerprime