Personal Care Aide Statistics 2026: Job Market, Pay, Demand & Workforce

CaregiverHires had 4,552 open personal care aide listings from 280 employers on November 6, 2026.

422 were first posted in the previous 14 days and 1,477 in the previous 30 days.

At least 47.6% of personal care aide listings were part-time on November 6, 2026.

Listings that name no schedule are counted as full-time, so the real part-time share is likely higher.

The benefit personal care aide listings named most often on November 6, 2026 was flexible scheduling, in 61.9% of listings, followed by health insurance (34.9%).

A listing that does not mention a benefit may still offer it.

To browse the openings themselves, see all personal care aide listings.

BLS publishes no personal care aide-only wage, so the figure here is for home health and personal care aides (SOC 31-1120), a combined BLS occupation that counts personal care aides together with home health aides.

The median wage for that occupation was $17.21 an hour in May 2025 (BLS OEWS, Home Health and Personal Care Aides (SOC 31-1120), May 2025 (combined occupation)).

The middle half of workers in that occupation earned $15.35 to $18.98 an hour.

Illinois had the most open personal care aide listings on November 6, 2026, with 689 (15.1% of the national total).

Texas followed with 557 (12.2%).

280 employers had open personal care aide listings on CaregiverHires on November 6, 2026, and the five largest posted 73% of them.

118 employers (42.1%) had exactly one open personal care aide listing.

The largest single employer, Addus HomeCare, posted 58.9% of all personal care aide listings, so this sample leans toward large employers.

BLS publishes personal care aides and home health aides only as one combined occupation, home health and personal care aides (SOC 31-1120), so there is no separate May 2025 wage or payroll count for personal care aides (BLS OEWS).

BLS says personal care aides, sometimes called caregivers or personal attendants, are generally limited to nonmedical services such as companionship, cleaning, cooking and driving (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025).

Employers reported 4,305,810 home health and personal care aides on payroll in May 2025 at a median of $17.21 an hour ($35,800 a year); the count leaves out the self-employed (BLS OEWS, SOC 31-1120).

BLS projects employment of home health and personal care aides, self-employed included, to grow 18.1% from 2025 to 2035, with about 760,500 openings a year (BLS Employment Projections 2025-35).

In May 2025, 2,274,140 home health and personal care aides worked in services for the elderly and persons with disabilities, the industry where most non-medical home care agencies are classified, at a median of $16.73 an hour (BLS OEWS industry estimates).

PHI notes that personal care aides have no federal training or competency requirements, unlike home health aides and nursing assistants, so their training rules vary by state (PHI Key Facts and FAQ, accessed October 2026).

PHI estimates there are at least 1.5 million Medicaid-funded independent providers, direct care workers employed by the people they support through publicly funded consumer-direction programs (PHI Key Facts and FAQ, accessed October 2026).

Listing figures are computed from every active, paid personal care aide listing on CaregiverHires at the time shown, and refreshed every six hours.

Listings on a job board are not a random sample of all personal care aide jobs, so read them as a picture of current hiring, not of total employment.

This page is published only while the live sample has at least 300 listings from 25 employers.

Advertised pay is the midpoint of the range an employer posts, or its single figure, and hourly and annual postings are never converted into each other.

The headline is the employer median: each employer’s own median, then the median across employers, so a group posting hundreds of openings counts once.

A pay figure needs at least 30 listings from 10 employers and is withheld when one employer posted more than half of them.

Federal figures come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the other sources listed below, quoted as published, with the year in each sentence.

BLS has no separate personal care aide figure. The BLS figures on this page are for home health and personal care aides (SOC 31-1120), which BLS publishes as one combined occupation, so they also count home health aides. OEWS covers payroll employees only; BLS Employment Projections include the self-employed.