ASHE figures for care workers: Reclassification and increasing rates

The Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) 2022 has been published bringing with it a reclassification of the Standard Occupational Classification, SOC 2020.

Data for the equivalent ASHE (SOC 2000) 6115, wages of care workers, home carers and senior care workers continues to be published and the 2022 data can be found on the Office of National Statistics (ONS) website.

The ONS also provide a general overview of all data collated in the survey.

The most recent data shows that carer rates continue to increase although not at as high a rate as RPI and CPI.

Reclassification

From 2021, the ONS has moved the occupation coding to SOC 2020 from 2010. The SOC 2020 applicable to care workers are codes 6135 (care workers and home carers) and 6136 (senior care workers). The equivalent SOC 2010 codes were 6145 and 6146. However, given the importance of ASHE 6115 for periodical payments, ASHE 6115 continues to be published by combining SOC 2020 codes 6135 and 6136.

Some readers may recall that the last SOC reclassification in 2010 caused an issue with calculating periodical payments. Whilst reclassification was foreseen in the Thompstone model order, it was anticipated that upon reclassification the ONS would publish the revised data for the prior year both for the previous SOC and the new SOC. This did not happen. Consequently the Thompstone model order was amended in RH v University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust [2013] to allow for the scenario where the ONS does not publish revised data for the previous year based on both the old and new SOC. As with the previous reclassification, the ONS have only published revised figures for the previous year, 2021, using the new SOC. This, however, should not cause any difficulties as all periodical payment orders should now have the RH amended wording.

ASHE 6115

The ONS have emphasised, as they did last year, that the impact of the pandemic and the furlough scheme has made interpretation and collection of earnings data difficult. As a result the ONS advise that the 2020 and 2021 data should be treated with causation and “we encourage users to focus on long-term trends rather than year-on-year changes”.

Given the reclassification, direct comparisons of the provisional and revised data for ASHE 2021 are not possible. Indeed, if such a comparison is made, the difference between the provisional and revised figures is markedly higher than that usually seen and is in fact a decrease:

Whilst the data from the ONS should be treated with caution generally in light of the warnings given about the pandemic, across the median weekly earnings for all full-time employees in April 2022, there was an increase by 5% from a year earlier on a nominal basis. The median weekly earnings for full-time care workers have increased by 8.7% carrying on the trend of carer’s earnings increasing at a higher rate than earnings generally.

For comparison, the Living Wage increased by 6.62% in April 2022, the Retail Prices Index increased by 11.13% in the year to April 2022 and the Consumer Prices Index rose by 9% in the same period.  

Given the current issues with inflation, whilst carer’s wages continue to increase, in reality they are faced with a real-life decrease. It is hard to envisage carer’s wages continuing to increase at such a high rate in the current economic climate but nothing can be predicted with certainty.

Application to ASHE Linked PPOs

For the percentiles most frequently encountered by Insurers in periodical payment orders to which they are a party, the new figures are as set out in the table below.

Whilst the percentage increase is set out below this needs to be caveated with the decrease between the provisional and revised figures for 2021. The increases in at the 75^th, 80^th and 90^th centile are below the increase for the median and are more comparable to the increase in the Living Wage.