More assignments. Uneven recovery.
September extended the recovery seen in August. Assignment volume continued to grow faster than consultant availability – although the rising Unassignment Index shows that the improvement remains uneven.
📊 Assignments & competition
Assignment volume increased by 33.4% compared with August and by 30.0% year-on-year.
Available consultants increased by 23.8% from August and by 19.2% from last year. Demand therefore grew faster than supply.
The number of companies advertising assignments was almost unchanged from August at −1.2%, but 3.9% higher year-on-year.
Brainville’s three-month Unassignment Index, UIX, rose by 0.6 percentage points to 6.5%, while remaining 0.5 points below last year. The monthly reading was higher at 7.69%, suggesting that the stronger demand has not yet reached all available consultants equally.
Registration activity also remained exceptionally high for the second consecutive month, at roughly twice its normal level.
🌍 Local markets
Assignment volume increased in all five markets:
↑ Finland: +38.8%
↑ Sweden: +37.5%
↑ Poland: +23.3%
↑ Norway: +17.3%
↑ Denmark: +4.9%
Poland recorded the strongest year-on-year growth at 73.5%. Norway was the only market still below last year.
Demand grew faster than supply in Sweden and Poland. The opposite was true in Denmark and Norway, while Finland was almost perfectly balanced.
The metropolitan regions’ share of the overall market increased by 1.5 percentage points, partly reversing August’s decline.
🏠 Remote work
Across the full market, now including Poland, 41.7% of assignments offered remote or hybrid work:
• Fully remote: 6.4%
• Hybrid: 35.3%
The share declined in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Poland, while Norway moved in the opposite direction.
👩💻 Roles
Compared with August, Developers, Test Automation Specialists and Business Analysts each gained approximately 1 percentage point.
Project Managers and Test Managers lost around 1 point, while DataX decreased by approximately 1.5 points.
Overall, September brought stronger demand – but not an equally strong improvement for every consultant.
📷 The photo is from an early-morning run through Bamberg, with the Old Town Hall behind me. According to local legend, it was built on an artificial island after the bishop refused the citizens land for a town hall. So they created their own. A rather ambitious solution to a planning dispute.