Top-paying sectors and roles for contractors in 2019

Contracting may not be for everyone but for those who are willing to fully embrace it, they can find themselves having greater control over the type of projects they work on, being able to choose which companies they work with and where, and ultimately if they structure the way they work correctly they could take home more money than they did as an employee.

If you’re thinking of contracting in your field of expertise or are thinking of retraining in a different sector, here is a list of some of the top paying contract roles:

Sources: Indeed, Jobsite, IT, CW Jobs

N.B: These are average day rates and rates may vary in different areas, particularly in cities like London, Manchester and Birmingham where there is a higher demand for contractors with these skills.

From the table above, it’s evident that the contracting skills most in demand are centred around the Finance, IT and Change Management sector. But what skills will be in demand in twenty or thirty years?

A report by the McKinsey Global Institute titled ‘Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills and wages’ found that by 2030, 800 million jobs will be lost worldwide to automation. The study focused on 46 countries and found that the countries who are most at risk of job losses to automation include the more affluent nations like India, US, Germany and the UK. This may sound surprising, but these are the countries who have the resources to put into automation.

As the speed at which are robots are taking over human roles, increases, Thomas Frey, an IBM award winning Engineer and futurist, predicts that the jobs which will be in demand in 2040 include: Robot Maintenance, Data Engineers / Managers, Drone Operatives, Personal health physicians, AI freelancers such as AI writers and AI artists, Driverless crew operatives and engineers, Blockchain Architects, 3D printing fabricators, Cryptocurrency wealth managers and mortgage brokers and Space technology crews. Some of these roles certainly do sound fantastical!

If you are looking to start contracting and are not sure how to start, download our free Guide to Contracting which covers things like the pros and cons of contracting, whether you should work through an umbrella company or a limited company, what you can claim as business expenses and how to find a contractor accountant. Download your free copy here. Or, if you are already contracting and have a question for us, speak to one of our Directors on 01962 867550 or send us a message via our website.