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If there was any part of the UK in which to form a contractor limited company during 2014, it was surely Scotland, which outperformed most of the rest of the UK for much of the last 12 months. That period may have come to an end, however, with the news of a softening contracting market north of the border in the first month of 2015. As also reported by the Contractor Calculator website, agency billings had been on the increase in Scotland for two and a half years, but the Bank of Scotland Report on Jobs for January revealed a decline for the first time since 2008. Pay rate growth was also flat, while not since May 2013 has there been such weak growth in vacancies. Bank of Scotland chief economist Donald MacRae commented: "Scotland's job market continued to improve in January but showed signs of cooling. The number of people appointed to permanent jobs rose but temporary appointments fell." Dave Chaplin, CEO at ContractorCalculator, outlined the dependence of the Scottish contracting market on what he described as the "three centres of excellence" of oil and gas in Aberdeen, video games in Dundee and Edinburgh's financial services sector. He added that "there is also a strong but more dispersed engineering presence, with pockets particularly of renewables activity around Glasgow." January did see continued strong prospects for Edinburgh's finance contractors, candidates remaining in short supply in the city. Improvements in pay for gaming contractors in Dundee was another bright note. However, a slowing oil and gas sector alongside the plummeting oil price was much less good news for overall contracting prospects in this area of the UK. Another unwelcome development was the negative growth recorded for the Scottish interim market. This is a traditionally poor-performing sector compared to the rest of the UK, but January actually saw a fall in demand for executive and professional Contractor limited company, the only contracting discipline for which this was the case. Occupying second place in the overall demand league table was IT and engineering, followed by engineering and construction. Accounts and financial ranked in fifth place. Growth was still recorded for all of these sectors, but activity nonetheless slowed in the period between December 2014 and January 2015. MacRae concluded: "This Report on Jobs suggests the Scottish economy continues to grow at the start of 2015 but at a slower rate than the end of last year."
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