The first three months of 2010 saw a four per cent increase in technology jobs advertised compared to the last quarter of 2009.

Despite the banking crisis the financial sector is still posting more ads for permanent posts than any other, according to jobs sites CWjobs and JobAdsWatch.co.uk. In second place is Media, then Retail and Public Sector. Finance jobs also showed the biggest growth in postings - 23 per cent in the quarter.

For contractors Finance is again the biggest advertiser followed by Public Sector, Media, then Retail and Manufacturing takes bottom spot for both temps and perms.

In terms of skills SQL is most mentioned followed by C and then C#.

In the first three months of 2010 52 per cent of ads for permanent jobs mentioned these three skills. C# showed the biggest growth up 12 per cent in the quarter. In fourth place was .NET, SQL Server and ASP took sixth place. These four skills have remained the most popular for permanent jobs since early 2009.

For contractors the picture was similar, although skills required do change - SQL, C and C# took the top three slots followed by Java, Oracle and SQL Server. Since the first quarter of 2009 Java jumped from sixth to fourth place and C# went from fifth to third.

CWJobs, which claims 320,000 visitors a month, said it was encouraging to see some signs of recovery and they hoped it marked increased investment in IT. ®