Skills for Care chief warns "there will be no happy ending" if there is no improvement in adult social care domestic recruitment as it publishes its annual workforce report
England’s adult social care workforce has continued to expand and vacancy rates have reached their lowest level in a decade, but “the longer term story is full of challenges,” according to a report.
The Skills for Care annual analysis of adult social care workforce supply and demand shows another year of growth in filled posts, with a more than ten percent drop in vacant posts, despite international recruitment cuts due to new government policy since 2024.
The vacancy rate was the lowest since 2015/16 at 6.2 per cent, marking the continuation of a a trend in falling rates since a high of 10.4 per cent in 2021/22, according to the report.
However, Skills for Care warned this short-term progress masks deeper structural issues facing providers as the rate of workforce growth is slowing, while vacancy levels remain consistently higher than in the wider economy.
Skills for Care CEO Professor Oonagh Smyth warned “there will be no happy ending unless we can address adult social care’s domestic recruitment challenges” as the decline in UK nationals working in the sector continues alongside increasing constraints on overseas recruitment
The number of posts filled by people with a British nationality fell by 3.6 per cent (40,000) in 2025/26, continuing a trend of reductions each year since a peak during the pandemic in 2020/21, when numbers of domestic workers dropped by more than one in ten (10.8 per cent) to 130,000.
Meanwhile, the number of posts filled by people with a non-British, non-EU nationality increased by 60,000 in 2025/26, including non-British people who were already in the UK and started roles in the sector.
Professor Smyth warned the sector will need around 410,000 additional posts by 2040 “just to keep pace” with the growth in the population aged over 65.
The report is based on Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) data, which now captures information on more than three quarters of a million workers across over 21,000 care locations, providing one of the most comprehensive sector data sets.
Professor Smyth added the organisation is now “bringing the sector together” to develop a ten-year plan for attracting people into care careers – a key recommendation of its 2024 Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care in England.
