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Tony Wai from Crackerjacks and Megan Alexander from Robert Half were panelists at NZICA’s February contracting forum, which took place on the 23rd February.

The key theme of the discussion focused on what the 2010 market would have in store for accounting contractors.  It was the general opinion that for the first three quarters of the year, accounting contracts would still, unfortunately, be low in volume.  While other sectors such as IT and sales could experience a spike earlier in the year due to new project work; it will take a while for this to flow on to the accounting sector.

Market rates were also discussed; Megan felt that career contractors had taken pay cuts to secure work over the past year, which has had a deflationary affect on market rates.  Tony agreed with this but made the point that contractors with specific skill sets who can ‘tick all the boxes’ have retained their hourly rate, as specialist skills are still in demand.

But it appears that contracting rates are still approximately 40% higher than those of equivalent permanent roles.  This is based on ‘naked rates’, which is what the contractor is actually paid – without agency fees incorporated.  Tony used the the Crackerjacks September rate guide and recent rate data from Moyle Consulting’s Rem-on-Demand February data to make this comparison.

The point was repeatedly made that networking is crucially important and contractors should be actively pursing all their options to secure work, including personal networks, job portals, social media and agencies.