Story originally published by NC Health News

Grace Vitaglione, Jan. 23, 2025

The NC Center on the Workforce for Health in collaboration with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, North Carolina Institute of Medicine, North Carolina Coalition on Aging, North Carolina Area Health Education Centers and Piedmont AHEC hosting a workshop on Jan. 15 to help define the direct care workforce.

The workshop was the first in a series focused on taking action on recommendations in a 2024 report by the Caregiving Workforce Strategic Leadership Council to strengthen the state’s direct care workforce. 

Leaders of these organizations realized that figuring out who the direct care workforce includes is the first step in addressing the overarching problem: There aren’t enough of them. PHI, a long-term care policy research and advocacy organization, found that from 2018 to 2028, North Carolina would need to fill more than 186,000 openings in direct care. That includes nearly 21,000 new jobs to meet rising demand and 165,500 jobs that will be vacant as existing workers leave or retire.

Before efforts to bump up salaries during the pandemic, North Carolina direct care workers’ wages actually decreased over the past decade when adjusted for inflation, PHI found in 2021.

Lack of professional advancement and benefits, inadequate training, lack of respect and the aging population are also all challenges to growing the direct care workforce, according to the leadership council’s report.

Council members came up with recommendations to address these barriers, but it will take collaboration from all sides to achieve change, said Andy MacCracken, director of the NC Center on the Workforce for Health.