Care worker turnover falls to 15.3% where five conditions come together

Five conditions together cut turnover to less than half

Care workers are far less likely to leave when their employer gets five things right at once. That is the main finding of the annual workforce report for England from Skills for Care, the national charity for the adult social care workforce, published on 14 October 2026 and covering 2025/26.

Turnover falls from 34.3% to 15.3% where employers combine competitive pay, guaranteed hours, training, qualifications and full-time employment opportunities (opens in a new tab), according to Skills for Care. Fewer than half as many staff leave.

A registered manager can hold a service against those five points today. An operator gets a plain figure to put beside the cost of spending on staff. Across private and charity providers, turnover has kept falling in recent years.

Much of the sector falls short of the package

The rest of the report shows how far the sector is from that package. Only one in four independent sector employers contribute more than the minimum 3% to care workers' pensions (opens in a new tab), according to Skills for Care, and one in four pay more than Statutory Sick Pay.

Pensions are already a live question, as our piece on the promised care worker pension with nobody yet named to pay sets out.

Qualifications, one of the five conditions, are going backwards. Just 37% of care or support workers held a level 2 or above qualification in 2025/26 (opens in a new tab), down from 48% in 2018/19, according to the same Skills for Care data.

Experienced managers count as well

A separate finding points the same way. Turnover falls from 28.3% to 20.6% as registered manager experience increases (opens in a new tab), according to Skills for Care, which reads this as a reason to hold on to experienced managers.

A service with an experienced manager and all five conditions might hope the two effects add up. The report does not test that. The findings come from different analyses, so treat any combined effect as a hope, not a forecast.

Linked, not proven

The report shows that the five conditions and lower turnover go together. It does not show that adding them will make your staff stay. In our view, employers able to offer all five may differ in other ways too.

The pension and sick pay figures come from employers who responded, not from every registered provider, so the true share across the sector may differ.

Each leaver gets harder to replace

Losing staff matters more as replacing them gets harder. The workforce grew for a fourth year in a row and vacancies fell to their lowest level in a decade. But filled posts grew by 1.4% in 2025/26, Skills for Care says, the slowest rate in four years, with fewer British workers and a significant reduction in international recruitment.

Young people are the obvious pool, yet they make up just 7% of the workforce against 12% of England's economically active population, according to Skills for Care. Under-25s also leave most often: Skills for Care says their turnover, at 35.5%, is the highest of any age group. The group employers most need is the hardest to hold on to.

Can employers afford all five?

Skills for Care chief executive Professor Oonagh Smyth argued that "workforce investment and quality improvement are not competing priorities" (opens in a new tab). The report also links stronger CQC ratings to higher pay, more training and lower vacancy rates, though it gives no single figure for that link.

The Care Workers' Charity responded by calling for action on fair pay, secure working conditions and greater recognition of care workers' skills (opens in a new tab).

The report has shown what makes care workers stay. The question it leaves open is how many employers can pay for all five at once.