State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England report 2024
We are pleased to be able to share with you the latest version of the ‘State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ report.
The report includes detailed and comprehensive intelligence on changes to the adult social care sector in the last year.
You can find the full report and data visualisations on this website. You can also access updated regional and local data.
Key findings include:
The workforce grew (to 1.71 million filled posts) and vacancies fell (to 131,000 on any given day) for the second successive year.
24.2% of people working in care left their jobs in 2023/24, compared with 29.1% the previous year.
The number of men working in the female-dominated sector reached a record high, with men accounting for 21% of the workforce. The proportion had been static at 18% from 2012/13 until 2022/23, when it rose for the first time, to 19%.
These positive statistics are mainly due to the record level of international recruitment in 2023/24. The year saw 105,000 international recruits starting roles in social care and the number of people in the workforce with a British nationality shrinking by 30,000. Over the two years since March 2022, 185,000 international recruits joined, and the number of British workers fell by 70,000.
While the turnover rate for internationally recruited staff in the frontline ‘Care Worker’ role was 30%, the turnover rate for Care Workers with a British nationality was 41.1%.
29% of international recruits were male, but men only accounted for 15% of British care staff.
The sector’s vacancy rate of 8.3% was still around 3 times that of the wider economy.
The sector will need another 540,000 posts by 2040 if the workforce is to grow in proportion to the number of people aged over 65 in the population.
Skills for Care are grateful to all the social care providers who contribute their data by using the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set. Without those contributions, estimates of the detail and accuracy included in the report wouldn’t be possible.