3 Dec 2025 ● Matt Farrah, Nurses.co.uk Founder
Stats And Facts On The UK's Nursing Workforce 2026
An at-a-glance compilation of the latest UK nursing workforce data for 2026.
We thought it would be useful to have a one-stop-shop for facts and stats on the UK's nursing workforce. There’s no fluff here, just the data!
How many Registered Nurses are there in the UK?
There are 793,694 Nurses on the permanent NMC register in the UK as of September 2025.
This is up from just under 750,000 in November 2023.
It marks a steady increase in total numbers in recent years.
How many UK Nurses are there in each field of practice / branch of nursing?
Figures from NMC Register September 2025:
632,082 = Adult Nurses
105,103 = Mental Health Nurses
62,556 = Children's Nurses
16,796 = Learning Disability Nurses
All categories saw a year-on-year increase , with the exception of LD Nurses which slightly decreased in number.
How many Nurses joined the NMC Register for the first time in the last six months?
In total, 7,094 new professionals joined the NMC register between 1 April and the latest available figures taken in September 2025.
How many Nurses have left the NMC Register in the last year?
In total, 15,071 left the register in the last year.
However, with more than 20,000 people joining across the same period, the register has still grown overall.
What percentage of Nurses and workers on the NMC register were recruited from outside of the UK?
As of September 2025, 24.4% of NMC registrants were educated and recruited from outside the UK.
What is the average age of a UK Registered Nurse in 2026?
According to NMC Register figures for September 2025, the average age of an NMC registered professional is now 44 years and 1 month. That's a small increase on the most recent figures.
What is the gender split of UK Registered Nurses?
11% of Registered Nurses in the UK identify as male, while 89% identify as female.
How many NHS nursing vacancies are there?
There are more than 29,000 NHS nursing vacancies across the UK according to the latest data.
The vacancy rate is currently hovering around 6%, which is a sizeable decrease from a high of around 12% a few years ago.
How much does the NHS spend on bank and agency workers?
The NHS spends almost £10 billion on bank and agency workers in the UK each year, according to the latest figures.
Approximately £2 billion of that is specifically on Nurses.
Find out more information on this subject, read our piece on the cost of retention in UK NHS nursing here.
How many people work in Adult Social Care?
Approximately 1.5 million people work in the Adult Social Care sector according to the latest data from skillsforcare.org.
How many jobs are there in social care in the UK?
According to the latest data there are 1.84 million jobs in social care in the UK - which includes both filled posts and vacancies.
How many vacancies are there in the care sector?
There are currently around 130,000 social care vacancies in the UK.
What is the care worker staff turnover rate?
Staff turnover in the UK care sector, according to the latest data, is approximately 23.1%.
Compared to other industries it's extremely high, but that rate has actually declined in recent years from around 35% 4 years ago.
What is the average age of a care sector employee?
The average age of a care sector worker in the UK is 44.
How ethnically diverse is social care?
According to the latest available data:
- 23% of the independent care sector is made up of Black, African, Caribbean or Black British workers
- 13% is made up of Asian or Asian British workers in 2024/25
That makes the care sector far more diverse than the UK's general population.
What percentage of social care jobs are in the private sector?
79% of social care jobs are in the private sector.
How many Care Home residents are there in the UK?
There are approximately 410,000 Care Home residents in the UK.
How many Care Homes are there in the UK?
Data conflicts on this question, but there are approximately 17,000 registered care or nursing homes in the UK.
How many Care Homes are rated as Outstanding by the CQC?
6.4% of the Care Homes in the UK are rated as “Outstanding” (656 homes)
Here’s how the rest are rated by the CQC:
73.8% “good” (11,564 homes)
15% “requires improvement” (2,348 homes)
1.2% “inadequate” (190 homes)
How many Home Care agencies are there in the UK?
There are 11,650 Home Care agencies in the UK.
How are the Home Care agencies the CQC has inspected broken down?
5.4.% “outstanding”
82.2% “good”
11.7% “requires improvement”
0.7% “inadequate”
(Find out more about the CQC and Registered Homes here.)
How many people work for the NHS?
According to NHS Digital data in England there are 1,226,677 FTE (full time equivalent) Hospital & Community Health Service as of March 2022. This is 2.4% (28,930) more than in March 2021.
The NHS (including all of UK) employs 1.4 million people making it the largest employer in Europe and the 8th biggest employer in the world. NHS England is the world's 17th largest employer.
New healthcare jobs over the next decade
There are forecast to be an extra 3.2 million health jobs created between 2021 and the end of the decade.
How much does the UK spend on healthcare?
Total spend on healthcare in 2021 was £277 billion, rising slightly in 2022 to £283 billion, according to the Office for National Statistics.
NHS / Government spending accounted for most of this, as the ONS states:
"Our initial estimates suggest that government healthcare spending in 2021 was in the region of £229 billion, accounting for over four-fifths (83%) of total healthcare expenditure."
The Kings Fund, however, says it was £37 billion less: "In 2020/21 the Department for Health and Social Care spent £192 billion."
How much of the NHS budget is spent on its workforce?
Just under half the total budget is spent on workforce.
The Kingsfund says this:
"the wage bill for the NHS makes up a substantial proportion of its budget. In 2019/20, the total cost of NHS staff was £56.1 billion which amounted to 46.6 per cent of the NHS budget."
Doing the maths, this shows that the £6.2bn spent on bank and agency staff, would account for 11% of the total NHS workforce budget.
How many NHS hospitals are there in the UK?
Every source will tell you it's difficult to count the total number of NHS hospitals in the UK.
The Kingsfund can't calculate it either but simply states there are 219 NHS Trusts, and some run more than one hospital, "for example, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust runs nine hospitals".
How many private hospitals are there in the UK?
There are currently 515 private hospitals in the UK according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund in 2020.
Nursing Pay
Pay is a huge topic in itself so we cover that extensively in separate articles on Nurses.co.uk.
Here are some of them:
