TL;DR

Demand for UK temporary technology staff reached 53.7 in September on the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s index, the highest reading since January 2023, ContractorUK reported on 3 November. Any reading above 50 signals growth, and this was the third straight month of growth. Recruiters and contractors told the trade title that AI work is a big part of it, though the index itself does not isolate AI.

The series has climbed from 48.2 in June through 51.9 in July (since revised by the REC) and 52.7 in August. By contrast, the REC describes the wider jobs market as only “starting to flicker back to life”.

The evidence for AI as the driver comes from people in the market. Natalie Bowers of Bowers Partnership, which places contractors with financial firms, said work from new AI roles and tools has meant no downtime in demand: “Firms want to catch up.” Contractor Nadine Drelaud, who specialises in AI delivery and governance, said the extra agency interest she sees comes from AI roles.

Adzuna’s data adds some weight. UK job adverts containing “AI” rose to 25,000 in September from 14,700 a year earlier, and one in four IT adverts on its site mention the term. Yet its overall IT vacancies fell 11.1% over the same year, which in our view suggests AI is reshaping tech hiring more than expanding it. Adzuna’s adverts are a different measure from the REC series, so the two do not map directly.

Drelaud also reports that 53.3% of AI-related openings she tracked over four weeks were outside IR35, against 16.7% of non-AI ones, and that AI day rates ran from £750 to £1,200 in September. That is one person’s sample and should be read as such.

What “AI experience” now means

Wave Talent recruiter Kieran Scully, drawing on 100 conversations in September, says the phrase on a CV has “stopped meaning much”. He says interviewers now probe for evaluations, observability and guardrails on systems with real users, and that strong LLM experience will not save someone who cannot explain deep learning basics. Forward-deployed and AI sales engineers are appearing in start-ups’ hiring plans.

Looking Forward

For UK employers, Scully’s advice is to “interview for production experience” and to “price the specialism” rather than the title. In our view, the more durable story sits beneath the headline: demand appears concentrated in a narrow band of AI-capable people while other tech vacancies decline. The figure to watch is whether the REC index holds above 50 for the rest of 2026, and whether Adzuna’s divergence between AI mentions and total IT vacancies keeps widening. That would point to a shift in tech work rather than a general recovery.

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