Home Health Aide Supply

National performance in this indicator increased slightly from the previous Scorecard and from prior editions. In this Scorecard, there were 24.8 aides per 100 adults with a self-care disability, compared to 23.2 in the 2020 Scorecard and 20 in 2010–2012. The slow historic trend of home health and personal care aide supply has not—and will not— meet the needs of older adults and people with physical disabilities requiring care. A lack of workers adds pressure to the LTSS system as a whole and to family caregivers who must step in in the absence of an available paid worker.

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55.7

Best State Performance

24.8

US Value

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Methodology

The number of personal care, nursing, psychiatric, and home health aide direct care workers currently in the workforce per 100 population ages 18+ with need for assistance with an ADL. Aides are those with occupation code 3601 (home health aide), 3602 (personal care aide), 3603 (nursing assistant), or 3605 (orderlies and psychiatric aides). and industry code 8170 (home health care services), 8370 (social services), or 9290 (private households), and who worked in the last 12 months.

Current year data are from the 2020 and 2021 American Community Survey, Public Use Microdata Sample and baseline data from 2018 and 2019 are from the same source.

Denominator data also from the American Community Survey, via data.census.gov. 2020 data were not available for the denominator, an average of the 2019 and 2021 values was used in the metric calculation.

The supply to population ratio was calculated for each year, and this ratio was averaged across the two “current years” and two “reference years” to create the current and baseline indicator values.
US Census Bureau, ACS PUMS, American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample (Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, (2018–2021), https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/microdata.html.

US Census Bureau, ACS, American Community Survey (Washington, DC: US Census Bureau, 2018, 2019, and 2021), data table B18106: Sex by Age by Self-Care Difficulty, available at https://data.census.gov/cedsci/.