The number of internationally recruited care workers joining England’s adult social care sector has plummetted by 40% in a year, as the closure of the Health and Care Worker visa to new overseas applicants cut off a recruitment route that had propped up the workforce since 2022.
The latest annual report from Skills for Care reveals that an estimated 30,000 overseas recruits started direct care roles in the independent sector in 2025/26, down from 50,000 the previous year and a peak of 105,000 in 2023/24.
The decline follows a series of immigration changes. In July 2025, care workers and senior care workers were removed from the visa route for new overseas recruits. The route was open to new overseas applicants for just three months of 2025/26, during which an estimated 1,500 people were recruited that way.
95% of that year’s international recruits arrived by other routes, such as student visas or as dependants. Early figures suggest the slowdown is continuing: around 2,000 overseas recruits joined between April and June 2026, compared with 7,500 in the same quarter a year earlier.
Meanwhile, the sector remains heavily reliant on those already here. An estimated 150,000 posts were filled by people on the Health and Care Worker visa in March 2026. Transitional arrangements allow in-country applications from existing care workers until July 2028.
International recruitment has been credited with helping to ease the sector’s staffing crisis. Employers that recruited overseas cut their vacancy rate from 9.9% to 5.6% between March 2022 and March 2026. The national vacancy rate has fallen from a peak of 10.4% in 2021/22 to 6.2%, or 96,000 vacant posts. Overseas recruits were also less likely to leave: care workers recruited internationally had a turnover rate of 21.6%, compared with 38.2% for recent domestic recruits.
But the report highlights growing concern about domestic recruitment. The proportion of workers with British nationality in the local authority and independent sectors fell from 69% to 65% in a year, around 40,000 fewer posts. Fewer British people are starting care roles, while leaver numbers have remained below the number of starters.
Growth in the workforce is slowing. Filled posts rose 1.4% (22,000) to a record 1.59 million, less than half the previous year’s increase. Meanwhile, demand is set to climb: Skills for Care projects 410,000 extra posts will be needed by 2040, a rise of 24%.
Pay remains a challenge. The median hourly rate for care workers in the independent sector was £12.60 in March 2026, just 39p above the National Living Wage, and almost half of independent sector workers were paid below the £12.71 rate that took effect in April.
Professor Oonagh Smyth, the charity’s chief executive, said: ‘Vacancies and turnover have fallen, but workforce growth is slowing, fewer British people are joining and international recruitment has fallen significantly. The task ahead is not simply to fill vacancies, but to build a workforce people choose to join, develop and stay in.’
The full report can be read here.
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