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The leak comes after the hire — Care homes & elderly care, France 2026

By Jason Wood

August 2026PDF · 19 pages16 min read

What you will discover

1Pressure has eased at the door, not inside: 54% of recruitment plans are considered difficult in 2026 against more than 70% in 2023, while turnover rose from 19.9% (2018) to 25.6% (2023).
2Care homes leak faster than the wider economy: 25.6% turnover against 21% in the private sector, with 11.4% absenteeism and 58.7% of homes using agency staff.
3You can fill your posts and lose your people at the same time: public care homes report a 2.6% vacancy rate — and the highest turnover of all, at 27.4%.
4The load falls on those who stay: among homes under recruitment pressure, 74% report a rise in workload and 42% increased use of agency staff. The loop feeds itself.
5Since the decree of 8 August 2026, supervision, absenteeism and turnover are published home by home: the internal leak becomes readable by families.

The full study develops each point with sourced data, sector analysis and actionable levers.

Available in French

This study is currently published in French only. An English edition is on its way — subscribe below and you will receive it as soon as it is out.

Contents

On the programme.

The thesis

What the sector knows how to fix is not what is emptying it: neither the candidate shortage nor vocation looks at what homes do with the carers they have already hired.

Sources & method

CNSA, DREES (EHPA 2023, TraCov2), OPCO Santé, France Travail, the French Senate, JAMA Network Open, European Observatory / WHO — dated, attributed, with scopes kept separate.

Movement 1 · The pressure

321,000 recruitment plans, 500,000 posts to fill by 2030 — but entry pressure easing while the internal leak grows. The role of budget deficits.

The signals

Five signals all pointing downstream: turnover versus vacancy, transferred workload, agency staffing become routine, missing recognition, and physical wear returning as absence.

The figures that count — and those that are missing

Entry pressure and internal leakage quantified, then the gap: no national carer eNPS, no standardised cost of a departure.

Movement 2 · The journey

From career orientation to replacement: where the carer journey tears, from dropping out during training to joining a team already under strain.

The four leaks

Our analysis: recruiting to offset turnover, vocation as an alibi for conditions, transferred workload as invisible debt, and agency staffing sustaining the problem.

Movement 3 · The levers

Steer retention rather than recruitment alone, name the conditions, treat workload as a debt, and make onboarding a genuine passage.

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