126 people applied for one project manager contract
Market fell 4.2% and project roles fell 0.8%; 1 in 3 project manager adverts now wants a degree; Northern Ireland Water published a £10.5bn framework that hires in 2027.
Issue 2. 17 September 2026.
The number
Employers cut project people last, but the ones who are still hiring are choosing from a crowd.
The market fell 4.2%. Project roles fell 0.8%. ▲ 204 advertised this week, up 6.8% on last week.
204 project support, PMO, project manager and programme manager posts went up on Reed between 11 and 17 September, against 191 the week before. Last week's count was taken on a Tuesday, so the 2 windows overlap by 5 days and the arrow is a first reading, not a trend. From next week the windows are clean.
The second figure is the one that says more. Adzuna's count of every live advert in the country fell 4.2% in 2 days, from 679,754 to 651,385. Project manager adverts fell 0.8% over the same 2 days, from 37,517 to 37,208. When the whole market drops and project roles hold, the profession's share of all vacancies rises. It is 5.7% today. That is the figure to watch each week: it moves when employers change their minds about project people faster than they change their minds about everyone else.
Average advertised project manager pay across all sectors is unchanged since Tuesday at £62,207 for August, up 8.9% on a year ago, and the September figure arrives next month.
Movement
Permanent, posted this week
| Rung | Adverts | Median salary | Middle half of adverts | Last week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project support | 14 | £29,375 | £28,000 to £32,500 | £31,750 |
| PMO | 9 | £55,000 | £40,000 to £60,000 | £60,000 |
| Project manager | 83 | £55,000 | £48,750 to £70,000 | £60,000 |
| Programme manager | 7 | £85,000 | £76,550 to £91,250 | £85,000 |
| All rungs | 113 | £55,000 | £55,000 |
The project manager median dropped £5,000 while the all-rungs median stayed at £55,000. That is 83 adverts against 81, so a real movement in the sample, but the middle half runs from £48,750 to £70,000 and a week of adverts from different employers can shift the midpoint by that much. Watch it over 4 weeks before calling it a fall. Programme manager held at £85,000 on 7 adverts, and its middle half tightened to £76,550 to £91,250.
Contract, posted this week
| Rung | Adverts | Median day rate | Last week |
|---|---|---|---|
| PMO | 3 | £425 | not enough adverts |
| Project manager | 20 | £463 | £419 |
| Programme manager | 10 | £575 | £575 |
| All rungs | 33 | £475 | £450 |
33 contract adverts against 19, and the all-rungs median moved from £450 to £475. Still a signal at this size, but the direction agrees with the technology-only rate, which is up 3.8% on the year. Programme manager day rates held at £575 on twice the sample.
Where the roles are
Adzuna counts 37,208 live project manager adverts across the UK. London has 11,807 of them, 31.7%, unchanged as a share. The South East 4,743, the North West 3,753, the South West 2,953, the West Midlands 2,907. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together 3,863, 10.4%. Every region fell slightly with the market; none moved against it.
Who is hiring
Unchanged at the top: AECOM 1,348 live adverts, AtkinsRéalis 645, Stantec 574, WSP 475, Amazon 455. AECOM's count is down 32 in 2 days and AtkinsRéalis is up 2, which is what steady-state looks like for consultancies that recruit continuously. On Reed this week, recruitment agencies posted most of the adverts: Reed's own agency 13, Hays 12, Rise Technical 10, Brandon James 10. Direct employers were the minority, and that is the case most weeks.
Hybrid and remote
29.9% of this week's adverts name hybrid working, 9.8% name remote. Last week: 29.8% and 6.3%. Remote moved on a small base and is not yet a change.
Training adverts posing as vacancies
75 this week, 26.9% of adverts with a project title. Last week: 90, 32.0%. Excluded from every figure in this issue.
Applications
The median advert had received 8 applications by Wednesday. 13 adverts had more than 50, up from 7. The most applied-for advert in the country this week was a contract project manager at £438 a day in data and analytics, with 126 applicants. A temporary Grade 7 PMO manager on a cross-government programme at £500 a day had 86. A PMO analyst contract at M&G had 71. All 6 of the most applied-for adverts were contract or temporary. Contract candidates are competing 10 to 1 for the median contract role and 100 to 1 for the visible ones.
Signal
What the 204 adverts ask for, as a share of adverts.
Methods and qualifications
| Requirement | All rungs | Project manager | Last week, all rungs |
|---|---|---|---|
| PRINCE2 | 15.7% | 16.4% | 13.6% |
| PMP | 9.3% | 9.7% | 7.3% |
| Agile | 9.8% | 10.4% | 11.0% |
| APM | 7.4% | 7.5% | 7.3% |
| MSP | 4.9% | 2.2% | 3.7% |
| Degree | 24.5% | 29.1% | 19.9% |
PRINCE2 remains the most named qualification and widened its lead. PMP moved ahead of APM this week, 9.3% to 7.4%, and ahead of Agile on the project manager rung. The degree line is the one that moved most: 24.5% of adverts and 29.1% of project manager adverts ask for one, up from 19.9% and 22.3%. Nearly 1 in 3 project manager adverts now names a degree. For the reader without one, that is the line to notice, and it is the reason experience has to be written as evidence rather than listed as years.
What is climbing
Budget ownership: 49.5% of adverts, 57.5% of project manager adverts. Last week: 47.1%. More than half of project manager adverts now say the word. Stakeholder management: 71.6%, still the most named requirement of any kind, though down from 73.8%.
AI: 17 adverts, 8.3%, up from 4.2% last week. That is a doubling on an overlapping window, which means most of the new AI mentions arrived in the last 2 days. 17 adverts is a signal. The direction is not in doubt.
Construction: 27.9% of all adverts, 37.3% of project manager adverts. Fit out and refurbishment in 5.9%, housing in 5.9%, decarbonisation and retrofit in 2.9%. The built environment remains the largest single buyer of project managers in the private market.
What is not moving
Business case: 6.4% of private adverts. Benefits management: 4.9%. Both up a point on last week and still a fraction of the Civil Service figures. Microsoft Project 6.4%, Jira 2.9%. Security clearance 3.9%, up from 1.6% on 8 adverts, which is too few to mean anything yet.
The Civil Service this week
161 live vacancies with project or programme in the title, covering 228 posts. 68 of the 161 are new since Tuesday. Ministry of Defence has 24, UK Health Security Agency 11, the Forestry Commission 10, HM Prison and Probation Service 10, Defra 8, the Government Property Agency 7, DSIT 6, Homes England 5.
By grade: Grade 7 34, SEO 28, HEO 18, Grade 6 5, SCS 8. Grade 7 is now the largest grade, having been second to SEO on Tuesday, because the programme search brings in the senior end. 8 posts are at Senior Civil Service level, which is unusual for one week. Among the new arrivals: 2 programme director posts at HM Land Registry, core casework modernisation and local land charges, both at SCS Pay Band 1, £100,000. A Director of Digital Inclusion and Skills at DSIT at SCS Pay Band 2, £105,000. Head of Uncrewed Air Systems at the Ministry of Defence, £104,000. Head of Programme Delivery at Homes England, £81,443. A Grade 6 programme lead at the Office for Investment, £80,538.
When a department advertises 2 programme directors in one week, it has funding it did not have last quarter. HM Land Registry is the department to watch for Grade 7 and SEO project posts in November and December.
Pipeline
Find a Tender notices from the last 7 days that will need project people. Open tenders hire on award. Planning notices hire in a year.
Awarded
No awards over £1m matched this week's search. Award notices lag tenders by months, and the frameworks below will produce them through 2027.
Open for bids
Codi Group, construction framework. £750m. Deadline 20 November. A multi-lot principal contractor framework for a Welsh housing group and its partner associations. Every lot winner staffs a delivery team from award, spring 2027.
NEPO, building materials and managed stores. £800m. Deadline 16 October. Managed stores for North East councils is a logistics programme with a project lead on the client side.
Southern Housing, fire remedial frameworks. £200m across 2 lots over 4 years. Deadline 14 October. Fire remediation is the most reliable source of project manager demand in social housing this decade, and this is one of the largest single frameworks yet.
North Hertfordshire District Council, Churchgate Regeneration Zone, Hitchin town centre. £100m. A single town-centre regeneration at this value needs a client-side programme manager and a development partner team.
BlueLight Commercial, emergency services fleet management systems. £52.7m. Deadline 12 October. A systems replacement across police, fire and ambulance fleets, with a hard cutover in each force.
Network Rail, Eastern Region permanent way minor works framework. £48m. Framework suppliers recruit project engineers and managers on award.
Coming
Northern Ireland Water, integrated partnerships framework. £10.5bn planning notice, updated 16 September. This is the largest notice the index has seen in 2 weeks. NI Water's next price control runs from 2027 and this framework is how it will deliver capital works for a decade. Delivery partners will build programme teams in Belfast through 2027.
FCDO Services, global works framework. £120m planning notice. Construction and works packages at British posts worldwide, which means project managers who will travel and who can be cleared.
Home Office, Life in the UK secure digital test and online learning service. £90.9m, market engagement round 3. A digital service replacement that will need a programme team from award.
Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Command and Control Programme. £70m planning notice. Next-generation command and control across the coastguard network, a multi-year systems programme.
Somerset Council, highway structures major works framework 2027. £60m planning notice. Bridge and structures work from 2027.
North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative, virtual wards and hospital at home. £100m planning notice. Remote monitoring services for NHS trusts, each deployment a project.
A pattern across this week's notices: 4 of the largest are frameworks being set up now for work that starts in 2027. Frameworks hire twice, once when the supplier wins a place, and again when the first call-off arrives. Both waves are between 3 and 9 months out.
The move
One thing to do this week.
Look at the 13 adverts with more than 50 applicants. All are contract or temporary, and 5 of the 6 most applied-for were posted by recruitment agencies for unnamed clients. The permanent market is 3 times larger and has a median of 8 applicants per advert. If you have been applying only for contracts, spend this week sending 3 applications for permanent project manager roles posted by a named employer. The odds are 10 times better, and the salary median for the rung is £55,000.
Method
Salary history, regional counts and top employers come from Adzuna, a job search engine that collects adverts from most UK job boards and employer career sites and removes the duplicates. It is the source the Office for National Statistics uses for its own vacancy estimates. Figures in this issue: 12 months to August 2026 for salary history; live counts as of 17 September 2026. Project roles as a share of all vacancies uses Adzuna's count of every live advert on the same day.
Advert content, the skills and qualifications employers ask for, comes from Reed.co.uk, one of the largest UK job boards, where the full text of each advert is available. Adverts posted 11 to 17 September 2026. 204 adverts across the 4 rungs after training adverts are excluded.
Technology-sector comparisons come from IT Jobs Watch, which has tracked UK technology job adverts since 2004. 6 months to 15 September 2026, reused under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. IT Jobs Watch covers technology roles only.
Civil Service figures come from Civil Service Jobs, the government's own recruitment site. Live project and programme vacancies on 16 September 2026. 161 vacancies, 228 posts.
Pipeline figures come from Find a Tender, the government's official register of public contracts above threshold across all 4 nations. Notices published 10 to 17 September 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Notices under £1m are excluded.
Percentages are rounded to 1 decimal place. Under 30 adverts is a signal, not a fact, and is marked as such.
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