How much does unpaid carer absence cost UK employers?

Cost of unpaid carer absence to UK employers

The headline figure

UK employers could recover an estimated £8.2 billion a year (Carers UK, 2024) in lost productivity, recruitment and retention by supporting working carers with paid carer’s leave and flexible working. The Carers UK report puts that £8.2 billion as the gain to the UK economy available through better worker retention, lower recruitment costs and fewer productivity losses if paid carer’s leave were introduced. It is the flip side of the bill that runs while support stays thin: around 2.5 million employees are juggling paid work with unpaid care, and an estimated 600 people a day give up work to care.

Don’t confuse it with the economy-wide numbers

The £8.2 billion is a national aggregate of recoverable productivity available to employers and the wider economy if paid carer’s leave were introduced, not a per-employer figure. It is a different quantity from the larger numbers that get quoted alongside it. DWP statistics published in March 2025 put the cost to the whole economy of unpaid carers being out of work at £37 billion a year; a separate lost-labour study puts it higher still. Those are national, cross-government figures for the cost of carers leaving the workforce, set against the £8.2 billion of productivity employers and the economy could win back by supporting them to stay.

What drives the cost

Most of it is reduced hours, attrition and the recruitment that follows. State of Caring 2024 finds that around 44% of carers in employment have reduced their hours because of caring. Every reduced-hours carer and every leaver feeds the productivity loss, the cost of backfilling the role, and the time it takes a replacement to get up to speed.

The legal floor you already carry

Every UK employer already has to offer one thing for free. Under the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, in force since 6 April 2024, employees can take up to one week of unpaid carer’s leave every 12 months to care for a dependant. It is a day-one right, needs no evidence of the dependant’s care needs, and a dependant can be anyone with a long-term illness, a disability, or care needs due to old age, not only a family member (GOV.UK). The real cost question is what you lose by stopping at that legal minimum rather than going further. See do UK employers have to give carer’s leave?

The business case for going beyond it

Paid carer’s leave and a genuine flexible-working offer are what turn a likely leaver into a retained, productive employee. Retention is the cheapest lever you have: keeping a carer beats replacing them on cost every time, and it is the spend that closes the gap toward that £8.2 billion of recoverable productivity.