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Publication, Part of

NHS Workforce Statistics - December 2024 (Including selected preliminary statistics for January 2025)

Official statistics

Publication Date:
27 Mar 2025
Geographic Coverage:
England
Geographical Granularity:
Ambulance Trusts, Care Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups, Hospital and Community Health Services, Hospital Trusts, Mental Health Trusts, NHS Trusts, Regions
Date Range:
30 Sep 2009 to 31 Dec 2024

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NHS Workforce Statistics - December 2024 (Including selected preliminary statistics for January 2025)

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Introduction

Proposed change to publication

We are relabelling the Provisional data as Preliminary data. Provisional implies that the data may change in future releases. Over the course of the four years we have been releasing this file, this has never happened, so we consider the label to be inappropriate. We will now label it as Preliminary, ahead of the more complete data release in the following month. Over the course of the next few months we will be expanding the content of the preliminary data, to make more data available sooner.

27 March 2025 09:30 AM

Page contents

Summary

This report shows monthly numbers of NHS Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) staff working in NHS Trusts and other core organisations in England (excluding primary care staff). Data are available as headcount and full-time equivalents and for all months from 30 September 2009 onwards.

These data are a summary of the validated data extracted from the NHS HR and Payroll system. Additional statistics on staff in NHS Trusts and other core organisations and information for NHS Support Organisations and Central Bodies are published each:

September (showing June statistics)

December/January (showing September statistics)

March (showing December statistics)

June (showing March statistics)

Quarterly NHS Staff Earnings, monthly NHS Staff Sickness Absence reports, and data relating to the General Practice workforce and the Independent Healthcare Provider workforce are also available via the Related Links below.

We welcome feedback on the methodology and tables within this publication. Please email us with your comments and suggestions, clearly stating Monthly HCHS Workforce as the subject heading, via [email protected] or 0300 303 5678.

Key Facts

Full-Time Equivalent (FTE)

is a standardised measure of the workload of an employed person and allows for the total workforce workload to be expressed in an equivalent number of full-time staff. 1.0 FTE equates to full-time work of 37.5 hours per week, an FTE of 0.5 would equate to 18.75 hours per week.

All NHS Hospital & Community Health Service (HCHS) staff

1,368,034 FTE in December 2024. This is 3.0% (39,390) more than in December 2023.

1,532,803 Headcount in December 2024. This is 3.0% (44,596) more than in December 2023.

Professionally qualified clinical staff*

Professionally qualified clinical staff make up over half (53.8%) of the FTE HCHS workforce.

736,388 FTE in December 2024. This is 4.9% (34,343) more than in December 2023.

 

815,072 Headcount in December 2024. This is 4.9% (37,895) more than in December 2023.    

 

* This group includes all HCHS doctors, qualified nurses and health visitors, midwives, qualified scientific, therapeutic and technical staff and qualified ambulance staff.

January 2025 Preliminary Statistics

This December 2024 publication includes a Preliminary release of a section of the monthly NHS Workforce Statistics publication for January 2025. This contains headline counts at national level of NHS staff numbers for the main staff groups and a detailed view of the Nurses staff group.

Last edited: 27 March 2025 9:31 am