What care work pays
Most care adverts quote an hourly rate for time spent in someone’s home. That is not the same as what you take home per hour worked, and the difference is where a lot of people get caught.
The legal floor
From 1 April 2026:
| Age | An hour |
|---|---|
| 21 and overThe National Living Wage | £12.71 |
| 18 to 20 | £10.85 |
| Under 18 | £8 |
| ApprenticeUnder 19, or 19+ in the first year of an apprenticeship | £8 |
Rates from GOV.UK. They change on 1 April each year.
Travel time counts
Time spent travelling between one visit and the next is working time. It has to be paid, and it has to bring your average up to at least the minimum wage across all the hours you work.
This is where an advert can look fine and not be. Take a rate of £13.50 an hour, 30 hours of visits a week, and 6 hours driving between them:
- Advertised rate
- £13.50/hr
- Hours actually worked
- 36
- Effective rate
- £11.25/hr
That is £1.46 an hour below the legal minimum of £12.71.
So the question to ask at interview is not what the hourly rate is. It is “is travel time paid, and is mileage paid?”
Why some employers can pay more
The Homecare Association puts the minimum an agency must charge at £34.42 an hour for 2026-27, and says staffing is between 75% and 90% of the cost of delivering homecare.
An agency charging well below that number is not being generous to its clients. It is running out of somewhere to find the money, and staffing is the biggest line it has.
What employers here are advertising
Not enough adverts here quote an hourly rate yet to say anything honest about the average. We need at least eight before publishing a figure, because a number drawn from three adverts tells you about those three employers and nothing else.
Pay by role
- Care assistant
- Senior carer
- Live-in carer
- Registered manager
- Care coordinator
- Nurse
- Support worker
- Area manager
- Recruitment and HR
If you are being underpaid
Underpaying the minimum wage is illegal, including through unpaid travel time. You can report it to HMRC anonymously, and Acas will talk it through with you first for free. You do not have to leave the job to raise it.