Florin Vadean, Stephen Allan, Hansel Teo
This study was conducted by Florin Vadean, Stephen Allan and Hansel Teo, economists at University of Kent with expertise on Adult Social Care (ASC) labour markets. It seeks to assess whether better pay could attract more people to work in the ASC sector in England.
Using data from the Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set, we estimated how much employment would increase if wages were to rise.
We find that, assuming nothing else changes, a 1% increase in wages would lead to an increase in ASC employment of about 2%. This finding is likely overstating the employment response from an ASC wage increase, as wages in other sectors (e.g., retail and hospitality) are assumed to stay unchanged.
In short, raising wages seem to be good solution to bring more workers in ASC, but other job markets could still play a role in shaping the outcome.
Florin Vadean, F.Vadean@kent.ac.uk
