A decade of low pay: Social services workers still earn around one-fifth less than the average

Social services work can be divided into social work activities without accommodation (e.g. home care, early childhood education and care (ECEC)) and residential care. More than two-thirds of social services workers provide long-term care (LTC), with most of the remainder involved in ECEC. The largest growth has been in social work activities without accommodation, reflecting policy shifts in Member States such as that towards enabling older people to live longer at home rather than in residential care. This is in line with the European Pillar of Social Rights, which emphasises the role of home care and community-based services. In terms of the workforce demographic, well over a third (38%) of those employed in social services are aged 50 or over – an increase of 4.6 percentage points since 2014. Just over four-fifths (81%) of social services workers are women – a decrease of 1.5 percentage points since 2014, following a period of consistently high rates of women working in the sector since 2008 (the earliest year for which data are available).

In the Member States, over the past decade, the average pay of social services workers has been around 20% less than the average pay in Member States’ economies as a whole. This pay gap decreased somewhat from 2014 to 2018 but increased again from 2018 to 2022 (Figure 1). By contrast, in healthcare, pay has been consistently, and increasingly, above mean national pay – by 11.2% in 2014, 17.3% in 2018 and 20.9% in 2022.

It is therefore unsurprising that, in 2024, on average, 37% of social services workers felt they were not being paid appropriately considering the efforts and achievements in their jobs, compared with 26% of workers in sectors other than social services. (These findings are based on Eurofound’s analysis of 2024 European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) data for the 23 Member States in which more than 20 social services workers were surveyed. The countries with smaller samples of social services workers (Cyprus, Greece, Hungary and Slovakia) were excluded from the analysis for reliability.)

Pay differs between social services workers depending on, for example, subsector, profession/occupation and country. On average, workers in residential care are better paid than those in social work without accommodation (earning 18.7% less than the average in Member States’ economies as a whole compared with 22.7% less), although pay decreased in the former and increased in the latter from 2018 to 2022. Workers in occupations that require little or no formal education are the worst paid. These include – depending on the country – (social) carers or assistants, child carers and assistant nurses.

Workers with professional qualifications often get paid more in other sectors than they do in social services. For instance, in 2022, health professionals (who are better paid than the average in Member States’ economies as a whole) earned 15% more than the average in social services but 60% above the average elsewhere. While this may reflect differing job profiles and levels of experience, earlier research by Eurofound also showed that nurses with the same experience and profile tend to be better paid in healthcare than in long-term care. The highest-paid social services workers include therapists, specialist nurses and social workers. They are, however, less well paid than relatively well-paid professionals in other sectors and/or such well-paid professionals are more prevalent in other sectors than they are in social services. This is demonstrated by the fact that the difference between the median pay (i.e. ‘the middle number’) of all social services workers and that of all other workers is smaller than the difference in mean pay; the latter is pushed up in other sectors by a group of better-paid workers more so than it is in social services.

EU-SES data from 2018 reveal that social services workers’ pay is lower than the average in all Member States and by more than 10% in all bar three: the Netherlands, Austria and Luxembourg (Figure 2). All three are among the countries where coverage by social partner agreements is highest.

For most Member States, the SES data only concern workers employed by care providers with at least 10 employees. While most providers employ fewer than 10 employees – both in social work activities without accommodation (85%) and residential care (51%) – those with at least 10 employees employ most of the workforce: 91% and 98%, respectively (based on Eurofound’s analysis of Eurostat’s Structural Business Statistics from 2022). One group of workers that is generally not captured by these data is domestic care workers, including live-in carers (those who reside in the household of the person(s) for whom they provide care). They often experience the lowest pay and worst working conditions.

Social services workers are more likely than other workers to live in households experiencing difficulties making ends meet: 31% versus 25%, according to EWCS 2024 data. Part-time work is much more common in social services than in most other sectors. Social services workers therefore work fewer paid hours per month, meaning the gap in average monthly pay compared with that of other workers is even larger than the gap in hourly pay. Many social services workers can only take on part-time roles because of their own caring responsibilities, such as for children or elderly relatives. Better access to childcare and long-term care services for such workers could enable them to work longer hours and thus earn more.

Whether or not pay is adequate depends on how much people need to earn to cover their expenses. Housing costs are key. When care wages are set nationally, this can pose particular problems for workers who live in areas with high housing costs, notably large cities, and who do not have access to social housing. It can also contribute to workforce shortages in social services. Housing policies can help, especially when aimed at increasing supply through new construction, reducing vacant housing, renovating properties and better connecting housing stock to work and services. Other policy measures that can help, beyond improving pay and reducing housing costs, include reducing the costs of energy, childcare, education, transport and healthcare.

The proportion of social services workers who, in the 2024 EWCS, cited ‘pay and employee benefits’ as one of the three most important areas where they would like to see improvements is certainly high, at 68.8%, but it is only slightly higher than among other workers (68.6%). This reflects the opinions of actual social services workers, however, and not those of workers who have opted not to work in, or who have left, the sector. Pay may therefore be an even more important factor in attracting workers than this proportion suggests. Social services workers’ wages often lie at or just above the minimum wage. Increasing the general minimum wage thus improves pay conditions, including by pushing up wages above the minimum.

Policymakers should look at improving working conditions beyond pay alone, to attract and retain workers. Measures to address workforce shortages, such as financial incentives to work beyond the pension age or recruitment campaigns, have limited effectiveness if they are not accompanied by improvements in working conditions.

Health and safety at work, including mental health, is highlighted as one of the areas where improvements are needed by more social services workers (30.9%) than other workers (23.4%). Physical risks specific to the sector (such as lifting people and working with infectious material without sufficient protection) obviously need to be addressed but the sector really stands out for the risks to mental health posed to workers, such as from adverse behaviour in the workplace and feeling emotionally exhausted by their work. Giving workers more influence over their work schedules can help mitigate other issues experienced by social services workers.

Improving working conditions can be challenging, however. For social work activities that take place at the home of the service user, the workplace is that home environment, which is difficult to regulate. The rapid growth in the home care workforce increases the urgency of addressing this challenge. Some measures to improve working conditions can also be hard to reconcile with providing the desired arrangements for flexible care. Better staffing can be part of the solution to improve certain working conditions, such as those relating to health and safety at work, including mental health. However, to attract and retain the necessary workers, overall working conditions first need to be improved.

It is also key to address the segregation of women into this low-paid sector, including by challenging care-giving stereotypes from a young age. The fact that women are over-represented in the social services sector also means women are disproportionately affected by the mental health problems that come with social service work. Again, the rapid growth of the sector calls for more attention to be paid to this issue, as poor mental health entails significant costs, both monetary and non-monetary, to the individuals affected and to society as a whole.

Eurofound’s 2026 project on long-term care, healthcare and ECEC will investigate these sectors, in terms of working conditions and people’s access to and the quality of social services.