A fall in financial services IT recruitment is a “right-sizing” rather than a downsizing of the market, according to IT recruiter McGregor Boyall managing director, Laurie Boyall.

The firm’s latest Financial Services IT hiring index shows that new vacancies were running at 31% (two-thirds down) of their peak earlier in the year and contract at 50%.

Boyall says: “While the first half of 2010 showed a sharp increase in opportunities we have now seen organisations hitting the pause button.

“This right-sizing is not unexpected given that for the first two quarters of the year we had seen an overall jump of 255% in permanent vacancy numbers compared with the beginning of 2010. Additionally many of the new contract vacancies were for long term projects which are obviously still ongoing.”

The research also reveals the most in-demand skills for H2 2010 were developers (35% of vacancies) and business analysts (15%) of vacancies, while the top three most active recruiters operated in derivatives (12%), risk (11%) and infrastructure (10%).