The wider market sets the tone for every finance team's plan this year. Early estimates for May to July 2026 point to 707,000 vacancies across the UK, a fall of 6,000 (0.8%) on the previous quarter ONS vacancy data for August 2026. That builds on an earlier reading of 712,000 for April to June, down 0.9% on the quarter and 2.5% on the year, with professional, scientific and technical activities among the sectors seeing the largest falls ONS vacancies and jobs figures.
So the backdrop is cautious rather than frozen. There are 2.5 unemployed people per vacancy, a ratio steady since mid-2025 the same ONS release. The hiring market as a whole stayed subdued through 2025, with employers taking a careful approach while still competing hard for specialist skills Computer Weekly's recruitment outlook. For finance leaders, that combination is exactly why a blended model earns its place: keep the essential roles permanent, and use contract talent to move fast when the work demands it.
The split usually follows the shape of the work. Permanent hires carry the roles that need continuity: financial control, treasury, statutory reporting, risk and compliance leadership, and the relationships that hold a function together year after year. These are the people who own the numbers and the audit trail, so they benefit from deep institutional knowledge that only builds over time.
Contract hires suit defined, time-boxed work. Think a Basel or IFRS change programme, a finance systems migration, a post-merger integration, or covering a year-end crunch. Demand for scarce technical skills is a strong pull here: AI-related demand rose nearly 200% in a year, with London taking around 80% of AI job postings Accenture data reported by The Register. As finance functions automate more of their reporting and analytics, teams increasingly need contract specialists in data and AI who can build the pipes, then hand over to the permanent team.
Skills England also flags digital and engineering occupations among priority areas already seeing high recruitment demand and expected to keep growing the Skills England annual skills report 2026. For finance teams building automated controls and reporting, that competition for digital skills makes the contract route a practical way to bring specialist capability in quickly.
Start with the work, not the org chart. Map the tasks for the next 12 to 18 months and mark each one as ongoing or time-boxed. Ongoing, judgement-heavy, relationship-led work points to permanent. Project-shaped, deadline-driven work with a clear end points to contract. That single sort does most of the heavy lifting.
Then protect the core. A stable permanent team gives contractors something to plug into and hand back to, which keeps knowledge inside the business. Build in handover time on every contract, and document decisions as you go so nothing walks out the door when the assignment ends.
Speed matters on both tracks. The KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs keeps a close read on how quickly candidate supply and demand shift month to month the KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs, June 2026. In a market where the best people move fast, a slow process loses them, whether the role is permanent or a three-month contract.
We give finance leaders one place to run both tracks. We search 15 million candidates, rank a shortlist in under 30 seconds, contact matched people in under a minute, and can book an interview in under three minutes, so a permanent controller and a contract migration specialist can move through the same fast process. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost, through Reed.ai. Tell us the roles you need to blend this year, and we'll start matching today.
