This year's report has changed

The methodology for this year’s report has changed from previous years. Adult social care related roles employed by the NHS are no longer included in the headline statistics for the size of the adult social care workforce. This change has been applied retrospectively to previous years, so the trends in this report are consistent. Comparing figures from this report to previous reports will not produce a valid trend. Also, our estimates for the number of filled posts in the independent sector now come from our automated data pipeline. This has resulted in substantial improvements to our estimates over time and some figures have changed as a result from previous versions of this report. 

Explore the data

A visual overview of our data on the adult social care sector and workforce in England at a national level.   

Use the tabs to explore different trends, such as the size and structure of the workforce, recruitment and retention, demographics and pay. The information ‘(i)’ button provides notes about the data, and the download PowerPoint’ button allows you to download a screenshot of the data visualisation for your own presentation. The tabs also include a glossary.   

Explore the data visualisation, you can access the full report, download the data and find out about our methodology. 

Read the report

Read the short report for a comprehensive analysis of the size of the adult social care workforce, an in-depth look at vacancy rates and our latest workforce projections. You can also download the workforce estimates’ data we’ve used to create the data visualisation above.  

Revision note: 27 August 2025

We found an issue with how zero and missing responses were being handled for zero-hour contract workers in the full-time equivalent (FTE) filled post calculation. Previously published figures up to 2023/24 were being slightly understated and 2024/25 figures overstated. This has now been corrected.

Learn more about adult social care