The Datum Report

Occupation 6131 · Caring, leisure and other service occupations

Nursing auxiliaries and assistants

Half of full-time nursing auxiliaries and assistants in the UK earn more than £29,084 a year, and half earn less.

Nursing auxiliaries and assistants assist doctors, nurses and other health professionals in caring for the sick and injured within hospitals, homes, clinics and the wider community.

How people enter it

There are no formal academic entry requirements. Off and on-the-job training is provided. NVQs/ SVQs in Health and Social Care are available at levels 2 and 3.

What the work involves

• performs basic clinical tasks such as taking patients’ temperature and pulse, weighing and measuring, performing urine tests and extracting blood samples
• prepares patient for examination and treatment
• distributes and serves food, assists patients in feeding and prepares snacks and hot drinks
• assists patients in washing, dressing, toiletry activities and general mobility
• changes bed linen, makes beds and tidies wards

Also called

Auxiliary nurse · Health care assistant (hospital service) · Health care support worker · Nursing assistant · Nursing auxiliary

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for nursing auxiliaries and assistants, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 11 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Ambulance staff (excluding paramedics) · Care escorts · Care workers and home carers · Dental nurses · Houseparents and residential wardens · Senior care workers · Undertakers, mortuary and crematorium assistants