Online job site oDesk is reporting that demand for PHP programmers is growing strongly and wages are rising fast.

ODesk's monthly round-up of programming jobs found that PHP programmers are consistently in demand, with pay rates higher than the average.

"PHP demand has been steady for months," oDesk chief executive Gary Swart told vnunet.com.

"Overall, PHP demand was twice that of any other programming language. Open source technology, led by PHP and MySQL, is by far the skill set in highest demand today."

The difficult financial climate does not seem to be having a major effect on the job market for programmers and developers as yet, but the situation is being monitored closely.

"PHP is superior to any other coding platform. It's free, flexible and offers a massive support community," explained Nicholas Pregeant, owner of Innovative Web Solutions.

"Plus, the extensive open source library of proven PHP and MySQL scripts are customisable, portable and scalable for almost any web application."