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Facts and Figures about carers – nationally from Carers UK and Census 2021 unless otherwise stated

Key facts about the caring situation in the UK and Hertfordshire

• Around 9% of the UK’s population are carers, that’s around 5.7 million people.
• 4.7% of the population in England and Wales provide 20 hours or more of care a week.
• Around 12,000 people take on a caring responsibility each day (research by Petrillo and Bennett from the Centre for Care, 2022).
• Women are more likely to be carers or acknowledge that they have a caring role than men – 72% of the carers registered with us are women and 27% are men. 1% didn’t give a gender or said other).
• 1 in 5 children and young people aged 18 and under are carers. There are an estimated 1 million young carers across the UK. 2,378 young carers in Hertfordshire were registered with us at the end of March 2023.
• Hertfordshire’s population was 1,198,800 in March 2021 and 8.4% of them were carers (100,915 people).
• More than 43,000 people who are, or have been, carers, are registered with us.

Money

• Unpaid carers in England and Wales contribute a staggering £445 million to the economy every day – that’s £162 billion per year.
• Carer’s Allowance is just £81.90 a week for people entitled to the benefit and provide 35+ hours of care a week. That’s £2.34 an hour – much lower than the national minimum wage of £11.44 for people aged 21 or over.
• Just over a third of the 10,751 unpaid carers that completed Carers UK 2023 Survey said they are struggling to make ends meet.
• 3 in 5 carers (60%) that completed our 2022 Carers’ Survey said they were struggling to make ends meet or were worried about their finances.
• 32% of carers and former carers told us that they were cutting back on essentials (2022 Carers’ Survey).

Health, wellbeing and Social Exclusion

• 54% of carers said their physical health had suffered because of being a carer. More than 1 in 4 carers said their mental health is bad or very bad. (2023 Carers UK State of Caring Survey.)
• Carers providing round the clock care are more than twice as likely to be in bad health than non-carers
• 50% of people with caring responsibilities said they felt lonely. (2023 Carers UK State of Caring Survey.)

Work and caring

• 1 in 7 people in the workplace in the UK are juggling work with caring responsibilities (Carers UK, Juggling Work and Care, 2019).
• Around 2.2 million carers work full-time and 1 million work part-time.
• There are 51,918 people in Hertfordshire who combine unpaid care with employment – 70% work full-time alongside their caring role and 30% juggle part-time work with caring.
• 16% of all working carers in Hertfordshire provide 20+ hours of unpaid care each week (8,237 people).
• An estimated 1.5 million people in England and Wales had given up work to provide care to someone else as at March 2021 – down from 1.8 million people in the 2011 Census.