U.K. Adult Care Work Sector Warns Visa Cuts Will Increase Shortages

Forbes

3 days ago

Female carer holding hands of senior man
A new report out in the U.K. shows that the share of British people working in the adult care sector is still falling, although overall recruitment is up. With new and far stricter rules now in place for foreign care workers, the sector is concerned that chronic shortages in the system will only be exacerbated.
In its annual report, the adult care body Skills For Care has revealed that though the overall vacancy rate for the adult care sector has decreased again, it has largely been foreign workers filling those roles. According to the report, the amount of British nationals filling care posts dropped by 3% compared to the previous year, and 7% compared too 2020/2021.
"We still need 470,000 more posts (filled) by 2040, so we need to stay focused on the workforce," said Professor Oonagh Smyth, Chief Executive of Skills for Care, in the report's introduction. "Especially how we attract and keep more people domestically, as the number of people with a British nationality in the workforce continues to fall."
In recent years, successive U.K. governments have made it considerably harder for the care sector to get the carers it needs to fill vacant posts, despite long-standing shortages. Care work is a difficult profession. The hours can be long and erratic, and the work itself can be both logistically difficult - involving multiple house calls in a day - as well as emotionally exhausting. It is also not typically well paid. For these reasons, U.K. citizens tend not to do those jobs, and it's typically left to foreign workers.
With immigration to Britain such a heated issue, however, changes have been made in recent years to make it harder for people to come fill those vacant posts, including scrapping dedicated visa routes for care workers, limitations on who could sponsor foreign care workers through other visa routes, an increase to the minimum salary threshold for such visas, and a block on foreign care workers bringing family with them.
Earlier in 2025, the Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced it would crack down even further on foreign care workers, as part of a drive to reduce immigration overall. The government has also done little address serious systemic issues in the sector highlighted by labor rights organizations, with worsening pay and low job security, long hours and difficult conditions.
All of this spells trouble for an adult care sector already desperately in need of workers. The government, having cut visa routes even further, has transitional arrangements in place for the next few years, by which time it hopes to have built up a domestic labor force sufficient enough to fill the hundreds of thousands of expected vacancies. Given the poor pay conditions of care work, as well as the often poor treatment of people working in the sector, and given also the U.K.'s previous failures to marshall domestic labor reserves for undesirable jobs, it seems likely the adult care sector's troubles are only going to get worse.