The report shows there were 6,095 whole time equivalent (WTE) practising social workers in post in June 2025, a decrease of 1.2% from December 2024. This was driven by a decrease in senior social worker roles.
The number of social work vacancies rose to 551 WTE (8.9%), compared to 511 in December 2024. Nineteen local authorities reported that their social work vacancies were hard to fill. The most common reason for vacancies being hard to fill was a lack of applicants with experience.
Six-monthly reports
We’re producing six-monthly reports to provide an accurate picture of social work vacancies at the request of the Scottish Government.
This fifth report presents data from 28 local authorities which we gathered in June 2025. All of them provided data on the number of social work vacancies. We imputed WTE figures from the December 2024 data for the four local authorities who did not respond; we didn’t impute vacancy figures.
This report compares data from the annual censuses of local authority social work services (LASWS) from December 2020 to December 2024 plus data from the June 2023, June 2024 and June 2025 six-monthly surveys.
Key findings from the report
- There were 6,095 WTE practising social workers in June 2025. This a fall from the previous collection but is still one of the highest totals since records began in the 1990s.
- There was a 1.2% decrease in the whole time equivalent (WTE) number of practising social workers between December 2024 and June 2025.
- Between December 2024 and June 2025, the WTE of senior social workers decreased (-6.6%) while main grade social workers increased slightly (+0.3%).
- The data from June 2025 shows a higher number of WTE vacancies compared to the December figures. A minimum of 551 WTE vacancies were reported in June 2025 compared to 511 in December 2024.
- The June 2025 vacancy rate was 8.9%. This is the same as in December 2024 even though the vacancies were higher, due to the change in the staff WTE of the reporting authorities, but down from 9.3% in June 2024.
- Vacancy rates were highest in the children and adult fieldwork teams.
- Vacancy rates in children’s teams were 11.3% for main grade posts and 6.4% for seniors. Vacancy rates in adults’ teams were 9.6% for main grade posts and 7.9% for seniors.
- Vacancy rates are higher for main grade posts (9.5%) than senior posts (6.4%).
- 19 of 26 responding local authorities said vacancies were hard to fill, with the most common reason being a lack of applicants with experience.
- The WTE of practising social workers has increased by 7.6% between December 2021 and June 2025.
- The number of WTE practising social workers per 100k population in Scotland has increased from 104.7 in December 2021 to 109.9 in June 2025.
Read the fifth Social worker filled posts and vacancies six-monthly survey report: Analysis of the data from 13 June 2025 published 17 December 2025.
You can read all our six-monthly social worker reports on our data website.