We’ve mentioned previously that 2010 was an unusually busy year for IT in finance recruitment, but new research suggests that hiring this year has be a lot more subdued. Risk and compliance tech roles remain hot, however.

Below is the latest quarterly snapshot by technology in finance recruiters McGregor Boyall which shows a year-on-year comparison of job vacancies for both permanent and contract roles.

Source: McGregor Boyall

In one sense this is slightly disconcerting – the numbers are consistently down by large margins on 2010 – but it does show that throughout 2011vacancies have remained relatively stable, even in August.

Is this really the case across the industry? Astbury Marsden, which this week said new City jobs slipped by 20% in year-on-year August, tells us the drop has been less sharp in IT.

Its permanent vacancies fell by 13% in August for by 10% year on year for the quarter. Contract roles, though, slipped by nearly 50% for the month and 25% in Q2. This is not entirely surprising considering that they’re always the first to go during a downturn.

“A lot of clients paused hiring during August, and the decision making process has taken a lot longer since May, which has contributed to the drop in numbers,” says Ben Cowan, director at Astbury Marsden.

The question is what is keeping the job numbers relatively stable. The simple answer is the mandatory risk and regulatory tech projects that are starting to kick off.

McGregor Boyall says that 16% of all vacancies (the largest proportion of all jobs) were in risk IT and 11 % were in derivatives (where regulations are spurring massive IT change projects).

Laurie Boyall, managing director at McGregor Boyall, says that the Independent Banking Commission’s recommendations are likely to prompt further shake-ups of IT systems, which will drive demand for technologists to “work on large-scale projects which will be driven by compliance and risk issues”.

Cowan adds that there’s “continued demand for risk, compliance and regulatory IT expertise”.