The most interesting development in IT recruitment is that the bottom has fallen out of the job market for database administrators. For example, we recently placed a good candidate in a London-based job at a top 10 law firm; even though his previous salary was £80,000 he settled for £35,000. The demand, which was initially fuelled by the dotcom boom, has downshifted considerably. Now there are a lot more people with Oracle and SQL skills and far fewer jobs to go around.
Salaries for UNIX specialists, on the other hand, will steadfastly remain constant: these skills are always at a premium. This is especially true for people with Linux and Solaris experience, as they are snapped up by banks and insurance companies, which tend to have massive back-office systems running on Sun or Linux.
