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 2025 (data from December 2024) 
  • Last updated: March 2025 
  • Next update due: March 2026 (data from December 2025) 

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 £11.44.

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

PDF - 1.22 Mb

Read the full report for a comprehensive analysis of independent sector care worker pay, as at December 2024. 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 (£12.21 from April 2025). 

Learn more about adult social care

Methodology for creating workforce estimates

How the Workforce Intelligence team estimates the size, structure and characteristics of the adult social care workforce in England.  

 

Data downloads 

Explore the data behind the reports and data visualisations by downloading one of our data files. These use our workforce estimates to look at all variables and are split by geography, sector, service and job role.   

The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England 

Annual report and data, providing a national picture of the adult social care workforce in England, including trends in recruitment, diversity and pay.  

Trackers 

Explore data visualisations that track the adult social care workforce in the independent sector on a monthly or quarterly basis. 

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