Pay in the adult social care sector

Pay information is updated annually in ‘The state of the adult social care sector and workforce report’. This page gives a mid-year update of pay rates for care workers in the independent sector of adult social care in England including the potential impact of increasing the National Living Wage (NLW). 

Published: March 2026 (data from December 2025) 
Last updated: March 2026 
Next update due: March 2027 (data from December 2026)

Download full report

Explore the data

Use the tabs to explore different trends, such as the wage floor and real term pay. Note that the National Living Wage (NLW) at the time of publication was £12.21.

The information (i) button provides useful notes about the data, while the Download PowerPoint button lets you save a screenshot of the visualisation for use in your own presentations. There is also a glossary tab which includes definitions of terms used.

Beneath the visualisation, you’ll find links to download the full dataset and learn more about our methodology.

Read the report

Pay in adult social care sector 2026 report 

PDF - 2.01 Mb

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Read the full report for a comprehensive analysis of independent sector care worker pay, as at December 2025. Topics covered include: recent pay trends, investigation of side effects as a result of the increasing wage floor, and the potential impact of the increasing the NLW (£12.71 from April 2026). 

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