The Government should invest £1 billion to make social care a real Living Wage sector according to a report released by the Think Tank the Resolution Foundation.
Despite social care being perhaps much less salient in people’s minds than the NHS, its workforce represents a significant part of overall public service employment (even though it is delivered largely via the private sector) says the report.
There are approximately 900,000 people working in frontline care roles in the UK as their main job, and approximately one million in total if we add those doing care work as a second job.
Not only is low pay endemic across social care, so too is insecure work.
Frontline care workers are five times as likely to be employed on a Zero Hours Contract as the rest of the workforce says the Think Tank
The cocktail of rising demand for care and reduced funding has put further pressure on what was already a low-wage sector.
Meanwhile, a fast-rising wage floor from the introduction of the National Living Wage has pushed in the other direction and squeezed margins and pay distributions further.
Despite this fast-rising legal wage floor that will have benefited the lowest-paid care workers, a very large proportion still do not get paid the real Living Wage set by the Living Wage Foundation
Almost three in five frontline care workers are paid less than the real Living Wage (currently £9.30 an hour, and £10.75 in London). Care workers in England are far less likely to be paid the real Living Wage than those working in Scotland says the report.
The UK’s frontline care workers – 83% are female, they are disproportionately likely to be Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic, one in three are parents, and one-in-seven are single parents
