Ageless at Work - Skills for Care

5. WIDER INFLUENCES ON THE ADULT SOCIAL CARE SECTOR
What has been the impact of the recession on the adult social care sector?
The way official headline statistics are published makes it difficult to accurately measure the impact of
the recession on the adult social care sector since statistics are usually combined with those for other
sectors. Notwithstanding this, there are certainly signs that this broader sector has fared relatively
well during the recession:
- The health and social care sector grew by 3.3% over the last year – a greater percentage than
any other sector in the UK (ONS, 2009a)
- The even broader ‘education, health and public administration sector’ was the only sector to
report job growth over the past year, had the smallest contraction in vacancies (ONS, 2009b)
and has the lowest redundancy rate (ONS 2009c)
- Skills for Care and Development has reported that ‘overall the recession is increasing demand
for many social care services’ (Alliance, 2009)
- The number of vacancies in selected care related occupations notified to Jobcentre Plus
nationally increased by 16 percent over the past year. This is in contrast to the fall of 16
percent recorded across all occupations 14 . One in ten vacancies notified to Jobcentre Plus
nationally in July 2009 were in care related occupations.
- Nationally, the number of unfilled vacancies in care work is only slightly higher than the
number of registered jobseekers wanting to work in the sector 15 . This compares to the overall
ratio of seven jobseekers for every unfilled vacancy registered with the jobcentre.
Regional data on the impact of the recession on the care sector is restricted to information about the
number of job vacancies notified to the jobcentre and the number of jobseekers looking for care
related work. Changes in the number of vacancies for care related occupations, care assistants and
home carers and all occupations in the South West, over the last two years are illustrated in Figure 2
(the number of vacancies are indexed at 100 for July 2007). Two main observations can be drawn
from the chart. Firstly, that demand for care assistants and home carers has followed a similar trend
to that of all care-occupations which is not surprising since on average care assistants and home
carers account for four in every five care-related vacancies. The second observation is that demand
for care-related workers followed a similar trend to that of all vacancies notified to the jobcentre until
the summer 2008 – when the recession started - but has subsequently performed rather better. The
number of care-related vacancies notified to jobcentres in the region in July 2009 was 43 percent
higher than the same month two years earlier, compared to a decline of 14 percent in vacancies
across all occupations.
14 Vacancies in care-related occupations increased by more than twice the national amount (38
percent) in the South West of England over the same period.
15 In July 2009, 32,205 registered jobseekers in England were looking for care-related work, and
26,913 unfilled vacancies in care-related occupations (Jobcentre Plus data accessed from NOMIS).
Ageless at Work: Change workplace cultures, development skills. Good practice report 47