£6,400 A Year Average Loss As Carer’s Cut Work To Support Elderly Loved Ones

Nearly a third (31%) of people aged 45-75 who are providing informal care to elderly family members said they had reduced their working hours or stopped work, in many cases costing them thousands of pounds of lost income and undermining future career progression.

New research1 from retirement specialist Just Group found one in 10 (10%) of 1,000 carers had given up work completely and a further two in 10 (21%) had reduced their working hours.

Fewer than four in 10 (37%) said their work life carried on as normal while the remainder were mainly either retired (16%) or not working previously (14%). Male carers were more likely than female to say their employment carried on as usual (43% v 32%).

Of those who had stopped or reduced work, a quarter (24%) said it had cost them up to £200 a month and a third (34%) between £201-£500 a month. The average amount in lost salary was nearly £539 a month (£6,468 a year), with one in six (17%) saying it had cost more than £1,000 a month.

Carer’s Allowance is the key benefit aimed at helping those providing informal care to elderly relatives. This tax year it is worth £81.90 a week (£4,259 a year) to those providing at least 35 hours a week care for a severely disabled person, provided their earnings are less than £151 a week. The benefit is removed for earnings above this level.

One in five (20%) carers who had reduced or stopped work said they received Carer’s Allowance. Nearly half (47%) said they knew about the benefit but did not claim it. A quarter (25%) said they had heard of it but were not sure how it worked while the remaining 9% said they had never heard of it.

“Caring for an elderly relative can be personally rewarding but is often a sacrifice in terms of income from employment where people stop work, reduce their hours or move to more flexible but less well paid positions,” said Stephen Lowe, group communications director at Just Group.

“The economic benefit to the country from informal care is put at billions of pounds a year. But the vast majority of workers receive no direct support for the hours of caring they put in. It is literally a labour of love.”

Carer’s Allowance will become more generous with a rise in the weekly amount paid to £83.29 – equal to around seven hours of the National Living Wage of £12.21 an hour – from April 2025 along with a rise in the earnings limit of £45 to £196 a week (£10,192 a year). 2 www.justgroupplc.co.uk

The government says this will result in 60,000 more carers eligible for the benefit by 2029/30 while the 1.4 million currently claiming will be able to earn more from work before losing eligibility. It is also reviewing the ‘cliff edge’ approach that removes all the benefit if working hours exceed the limits.