Social Care Sector Continues To Drive Demand For Overseas Workers Data Reveals

New Home Office visa data show the number of visas issued to social care workers, excluding dependants, reached a record 106,000 in 2023. Health and care visas as a whole (also including doctors and nurses) now make up 75% of all long-term ‘Skilled Worker’ visa grants, in a work visa system increasingly dominated by the public sector, the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said today.

The Home Office granted 350,000 ‘Health and Care’ visas in 2023 in total, including dependants, compared to 118,000 skilled visas in other sectors. This means the share of Skilled Worker visas going to health and care roles jumped from 58% in 2022 to 75% in 2023. Jobs outside of health and care included mostly private-sector roles such as chefs, computer programmers and management consultants. Some of the latter are expected to decline after new salary thresholds for private-sector jobs come into force in April.

Dr Ben Brindle, Researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said: “Serious shortages of staff in the care sector have been a major factor behind the high demand for care visas. On one hand, the government opened the immigration system to social care workers without addressing the underlying driver of shortages, namely the poor pay and conditions in a largely publicly funded sector. On the other, the social care route has been attractive to many overseas workers despite the poor conditions. It offers a more accessible route to living in the UK than other sectors, where it can be harder to find jobs that qualify for visas.”

In December 2023, the government announced a package of restrictions on work and family migration. From March, care workers will no longer be able to bring their partners and children with them. The precise impacts are difficult to predict, however.

Dr Brindle added: “The UK may become less attractive to care workers with family members. However, it’s also possible that employers will simply shift to hiring younger workers without families, or people who are willing to leave their families behind. In agriculture, the UK has been able to recruit tens of thousands of workers onto seasonal agricultural visas with less advantageous visa conditions. At the same time, care workers themselves will become more isolated if they come to the UK alone, and so may become more vulnerable to exploitation.”

Work visas are currently the largest important contributor to overall UK net migration, followed by international students, according to official figures released last November. Today’s visa data show that student visa grants declined slightly in 2023, from 619,000 in 2022 to 601,000 in 2023. In 2023, 144,000 partners or children of international students received visas. This suggests there was no ‘rush’ of student applicants, ahead of restrictions on family members that were announced in May 2023 but not introduced until January 2024.

Dr. Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory, said, “When free movement ended, the government said that employers would have to adjust. It turns out what this meant was that other employers would have to adjust. Where workers are directly or indirectly employed by the government, there has been much less enthusiasm to restrict. This has meant the public sector has increasingly dominated the skilled work visa system.”

UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea said:“The government has let social care get into such a dire state that the sector can no longer function without overseas workers to fill the huge gaps in staffing.

“Instead of grappling with the real problems by funding social care properly and tackling the exploitation of migrant staff, ministers now want to make matters even worse by stopping potential carers from bringing their children here with them.

“Major reform of care is long overdue. But until care workers are paid at rates that better reflect the skilled jobs they do, the sector will struggle to recruit at the levels needed to meet growing demand. A national care service and a fair pay agreement for care staff is the only answer.”