NHS Vacancy Statistics England, April 2015 - June 2024, Experimental Statistics

The NHS Vacancy Statistics compendium publication contains data from: NHSE, ESR and Trac. Data for all sources have been provided at a high-level by NHS England region on a monthly/quarterly basis.

NHSE collect and previously published vacancy related data which can be found as part of the Quarterly performance of the NHS provider sector publication series. The last data published (2018/19 Q4) can be found via the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/financial-accounting-and-reporting/quarterly-performance-of-the-nhs-provider-sector-quarter-4-2018-19/

This data represents management information only and is not an official statistic.

Provider vacancies and vacancy rates are published at an aggregate national, regional and sector level from 2017/18 Q1 to provide detailed understanding of where variation exists across regions and healthcare sectors.

NHSE collect this data directly as part of their monthly workforce data collection. The quarterly vacancy figures provided are based on the number of vacancies at the end of the respective quarter i.e. 2017/18 Q1 would be reported vacancies at the end of June 2017.

The latest technical guidance available to trusts can be found via the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-operational-planning-and-contracting-guidance-2020-21-annex-e-technical-guidance-people-planning-2020-21/

The guidance provided is that only active vacancies at the end of the reporting month are included in the collection, however, it is not possible to identify how long the respective vacancy has been live, or how many new vacancies have gone live within the month. The aim of this data is to understand the current workforce gap rather than any other vacancy related measure i.e. average length of vacancy or vacancies advertised per month.

It is possible for organisations to amend their data within the financial year to reflect any data quality improvements within their systems. Under normal circumstances data is therefore finalised for the financial year as at quarter 4 (end of March). There may be exceptional circumstances when data is updated for a previous financial year, therefore the latest publication in the series should always be referred to for the most up to date data.

As an exception, due to one organisation making a late submission for 2018/19 Q4 data, there was a small change in vacancy related data for this quarter.

A small number of organisations have changed sector within the 2020/21 financial year. This has been reflected in the data published and users are always advised to refer to the latest publication for the most up to date data.

For each quarter, a small number of organisations may not have submitted data in time for inclusion in the initial publication. In such cases, where data are available for the previous monthly submission, this has been included as a proxy. Should data subsequently be made available, the data for the relevant quarter(s) is updated in subsequent publications. As such, users are always advised to refer to the latest publication. This is the standard methodology for missing monthly submissions in the NHSE data.

Due to the national changes in the structure of NHSE and their regional and local reporting, data for 2019/20 Q1 onwards has been presented on the basis of the seven regional teams, whilst data for previous quarters remains aligned to the four commissioning regions which existed at the time.

Nursing and Medical staff groups are based on relevant Occupation Codes in groupings defined by NHSE.

NHSE data is not directly comparable to the other data included in this compendium publication because of differences in methodology and definition. It is recommended that different data sources are considered when drawing conclusions from vacancy related data as they each have different strengths and weaknesses. As with any directly collected data there are potential issues with respect to interpretation and application of guidance which may impact upon the data quality of the information published. NHSE have taken a range of steps to ensure consistency and accuracy are maintained in the data as far as possible, but users are advised to consider this when interpreting this data.

Data from NHS Jobs were included in this series since its first release in 2015. These statistics were created from administrative data related to job advertisements published on NHS Jobs, the main recruitment website for the NHS.

The time series included for NHS Jobs data began at April 2015 and ran up to September 2022.  Data are not available beyond this following the transition to the new NHS Jobs service, which completed in 2022, with the final publication of data in June 2023.

High-level data were made available in this publication with more detailed information being made available in a Supplementary files release. We will inform users via this page if a data feed from the new service can be established.

ESR is a payroll and human resources system which, since April 2008, has contained staff records for over 99% of the directly employed NHS staff in England. ESR is designed to support the entire HR process, including recruitment; thus, data related to vacancies may also be captured within ESR.

The time series for ESR vacancy data included in this publication begins at 1 April 2016.

Data is provided for NHS Trusts, CCGs, Support Organisations and Central Bodies in England.

These statistics explore data extracted directly from ESR for opened vacant posts. As one opened vacant post can be used to fill multiple vacancies it is not possible to accurately state the number of vacancies within a specified period. Therefore, the only accurate statement remains that the number of created vacancy full-time equivalents shows the minimum number of vacancies. It is not possible to state the precise level of undercounting, but it is possible to say that it will vary for different staff groups – for example the undercount for nurses is likely to be greater than for other staff groups because of a number of issues including the high-level of rolling vacancies linked to generic posts within ESR used for that staff group. This information remains a proxy data source for NHS vacancies.