NHS vacancies in England fall slightly to 97,475 by end of March 2026, but tens of thousands remain unfilled

Vacancies across the NHS in England fell slightly over the year to the end of March 2026, including in nursing and medical roles, but the health service still had 97,475 unfilled posts and the official figures come with significant caveats.

The overall vacancy rate for the NHS workforce in England stood at 6.5%, or 97,475 vacancies, on March 31, 2026, according to NHS Digital. That was down from 6.7%, or 100,114 vacancies, a year earlier. Among registered nursing staff, including midwives and health visitors, the vacancy rate fell to 5.0%, or 21,643 vacancies, from 6.0%, or 25,632 vacancies, at March 31, 2025. For medical staff, the rate was 4.5%, or 7,474 vacancies, down from 4.8%, or 7,679 vacancies, a year earlier.

The figures were published Thursday in “NHS Vacancy Statistics, England, April 2015 - March 2026, Experimental Statistics,” a new NHS Digital release covering the period from April 1, 2015, to March 31, 2026. The England-wide publication includes regional and trust-level breakdowns, but its main value is the national time series showing how staffing shortages have changed over more than a decade.

Vacancy numbers are widely used as an indicator of staffing pressure across the health service, but NHS Digital said a vacancy is defined as “a post that is unfilled by permanent or fixed-term staff.” The vacancy rate is based on full-time equivalent vacancies as a share of the planned full-time equivalent workforce, sometimes called the establishment — the number of funded posts an organization intends to have in place.

That definition matters because these are experimental statistics compiled from several different sources rather than a single direct count. NHS Digital said the series draws on NHS England provider returns, the Electronic Staff Record, Trac recruitment software and NHS Jobs. It also warned that the sources use different methods and “are not directly comparable,” meaning the figures should be treated with caution.

The release also makes clear that the data do not capture the full picture of day-to-day staffing on wards and in clinics. As NHS Digital put it: “Users should note these data do not indicate how much of the reported substantive gap is filled by temporary staff.” In other words, the figures show posts not filled by permanent or fixed-term employees, but not how much of that shortfall may be covered by bank staff or agency workers.

That limitation is important when interpreting the modest year-on-year improvement. A fall in recorded vacancies may point to easing pressure in some parts of the workforce, but it does not mean staffing shortages have been resolved, nor does it show whether services are relying heavily on temporary cover.

NHS England is now developing guidance for trusts on how to record establishment, or planned and funded workforce levels, which feed directly into vacancy-rate calculations. Over time, that could improve consistency in the data and make future releases easier to compare across employers and over time.

For now, the latest figures point to a small reduction in vacancies across England’s NHS, including among nurses and doctors, while underscoring that tens of thousands of posts remain unfilled and that the headline numbers are still an imperfect measure of the pressure facing the workforce.