My wife’s about to have to look for a new contract (project manager, mainly software delivery)- how competitive is the contract market at the moment- have job losses had a significant impact on the number of applications? If the number of applications have skyrocketed are all cv’s bring assessed or is getting the application in in the first few hours that the job appears critical? Rates seem down by about 20% against the last time she looked- is that a fair assessment?
Thanks for any info anyone can provide.

Try looking down the job center.

and which particular question did that answer (apologies if I’m a bit slow on the uptake)?

“Any IT recruitment consultants around?”

penny drops…

no, very, yes (reduced jobs + many more applicants = hard world),my guess is possibly – generally depends on cv match, employer defined closing date for cvs/start date for job, yes (I’m at 2004 rates),

try std sites jobserve, cwjobs, itjobboard etc etc.

I’d suggest looking abroad (*based on that in my particular specilaist field it’s a lot healthier)