Find out what's new in our updated size and structure data published this week

This week Skills for Care published our updated ‘The size and structure of the adult social care sector and workforce in England’ data.

This key industry insight uses data provided by social care employers to our Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS) between 2019/20 and 2020/21.

We’ve published this year’s data as an online interactive visualisation rather than a written report to allow you to use the data more flexibly. You can still find all the extensive data you would normally find in the written report within our interactive data visualisations which are easy to use and allow you to discover the data more flexibly and hone in on areas of interest. You can also download any of the data visualisations on topics of interest.

Here’s some of our key findings from our updated data.

Domiciliary care services continue to grow

Our analysis has found that domiciliary care services continued to grow during the pandemic. The majority of the increase in adult social care jobs during the pandemic was in CQC regulated non-residential care services, with jobs in this setting increasing by 40,000 jobs, which is equivalent to 7%.

Meanwhile, the number of care home jobs remained broadly consistent over the same period despite decreases in occupancy rates from 86% pre-covid to 77% in March 2021.

Our analysis also found that while the number of jobs in care homes for older people remained similar in 2020/21, between March 2021 and June 2021 the number of jobs within this setting had started to decrease.

The number of adult social care jobs has increased

In total the number of people estimated to be working in adult social care in England is estimated at 1.54 million.

The number of adult social care jobs in England has increased by 2.7% (45,000 jobs) upon last year to an estimated 1.67 million.

The number of full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs was estimated at 1.19 million.

In total an estimated 17,700 organisations were involved in providing or organising adult social care in England as at 2020/21. Those services were delivered in an estimated 39,000 establishments.

We should expect demand to continue to rise for social care services

As well as looking at the current make-up of the adult social care workforce, our data also projects how the future workforce may grow.

Our data reveals that if the adult social care workforce grows proportionally to the projected number of people aged 65 and over in the population then the number of adult social care jobs will increase by 29%, or 480,000 jobs, to around 2.16 million jobs by 2035.

What’s changed since 2012/13

We have identified a number of key changes in the adult social care workforce in 2020/21 compared to 2012/13.

One notable difference is that the workforce has shifted away from local authority jobs, with jobs in these settings decreasing by 24%, equivalent to 37,000 jobs. Instead, roles in the independent sector are increasing with the current number (1.32 million) being 16% greater than in 2012/13.

The number of jobs in domiciliary services increased at a faster rate between 2012/13 and 2020/21 than jobs in residential services. Jobs in domiciliary services increased by 22%, compared to a 4% increase in residential roles.

Registered nurses were one of the only jobs in adult social care to see a significant decrease over the period, with a 33% decrease, equivalent to 17,000 jobs since 2012/13.

How you can contribute to ASC-WDS

The data provided to us by social care employers using ASC-WDS is crucial in allowing us to produce our industry data insights, which play a key role in helping the sector.

You can help us to be able to deliver these insights by using ASC-WDS. As well as allowing you to play a part in creating data updates which help shape policy for the sector, ASC-WDS has many other benefits for adult social care employers including an easy and intuitive way to store staff records, and an opportunity to benchmark your organisation against others on factors such as pay, turnover and sickness level. This can help you get core insights into your workforce and make important decisions.

Find out more about how you can use ASC-WDS and how it can benefit you.

Keep up with monthly data tracking

Along with the release of our data update we’ve also set up monthly trackers for key workforce measures, including looking at total staff, so you can keep up-to-date with changes in the workforce on a monthly basis.

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