Ystadegau swyddi gwag y GIG: adroddiad ansawdd

These statistics present quarterly information about the number of vacancies and vacancy rates for staff who would be directly employed by the NHS in Wales by NHS organisation and staff group.

These statistics are classed as official statistics in development. This means that they are in the testing phase and not yet fully developed.

The data in this release and the accompanying StatsWales tables comes directly from NHS organisations. An Excel template is submitted on a quarterly basis detailing the number of funded full-time equivalent (FTE) posts as recorded on the finance general ledger and the number of FTE staff in post as recorded on the Electronic Staff Record (ESR) on the last day of the quarter. The ESR is a payroll and human resources system which covers all NHS organisations in Wales and England.

Data is provided by staff group as determined by the subjective code. This data item is in both the finance general ledger and ESR and has the same defined list of values which should be applied consistently between both sources.

The data includes vacancies for all staff who would be directly employed by the NHS in Wales. Agency and bank staff are not included. Primary care staff such as those employed in general medical practices and NHS dental practices are excluded as primary care practices are contracted differently to staff directly employed by the NHS.

One FTE is the equivalent of a person working the standard hours for their grade. For the majority of directly employed staff, full-time hours equate to 37.5 hours per week, more information is provided in the Staff directly employed by NHS Wales Quality Report.

A ‘vacancy’ is defined as the difference between the FTE staff budget and the FTE staff in post. The vacancy rate is the number of vacancies divided by the number of funded FTE posts recorded on the general ledger.

Data is submitted from NHS organisations on Excel spreadsheets via Objective Connect, a web-based tool to securely share and receive files.

Validation checks are performed by Welsh Government statisticians and queries referred to NHS contacts where necessary.

Data is published in line with statement on confidentiality and data access each quarter.

The statistics are currently published quarterly in an html webpage with brief analysis and commentary, in addition to open data format tables which are published on StatsWales.

Data is published by staff group at aggregated NHS organisation level.

NHS vacancy statistics relate to vacancies for all staff who would be directly employed by the NHS in Wales during the recording periods. Such staff are recorded on the ESR which acts as a data source for this dataset as well as the quarterly NHS Staff directly employed statistics and the Sickness absence statistics.

Any staff recorded as doctors in training, dentists in training, or pre-registration pharmacists, are not included. There are complexities in counting ‘vacancies’ of these types of posts as local health boards hold a budget for these staff but the majority will be employed by NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership through the Single Lead Employer (SLE) scheme. Health boards can also employ staff coded as trainees directly, without being formal trainees through the SLE scheme.

Data to date does not include the NHS Wales Performance and Improvement (formerly known as NHS Wales Executive), which is hosted by Public Health Wales; in December 2022 it was estimated that about 180 FTE staff were employed in NHS Wales Performance and Improvement.

Statistics are presented on a quarterly basis from the start of a calendar year onwards.

Data included in the release are published on StatsWales.

Data is available from December 2022; however, data was initially published by staff group at Wales level only. Data by staff group at Wales level, and for all staff at NHS organisation level was published for June 2023. Data by staff group and NHS organisation is available from September 2023.

These statistics will be used in a variety of ways. Some examples of these are:

• advice to Ministers
• to inform debate in the Welsh Parliament and beyond
• to monitor and evaluate vacancy levels in the NHS in Wales

The main users are:

• ministers, members of the Welsh Parliament, and the Members Research Service in the Welsh Parliament
• NHS organisations
• the Health, Social Care and Early Years Department in the Welsh Government
• other areas of the Welsh Government
• local authorities
• the research community
• students, academics and universities
• individual citizens and private companies

If you are a user and do not feel the above list adequately covers you, or if you would like to be added to our circulation list, please let us know by e-mailing stats.healthinfo@gov.wales.

Strengths

• Data has coverage for all NHS organisations and includes vacancies for most staff who would be directly employed by the NHS in Wales.
• Data is available by staff group although some differ to those used for quarterly reporting on NHS Staff directly employed and NHS Sickness absence rates.
• Data is reported quarterly to provide more timely data. 

Limitations

• Staff recruitment is likely to have seasonal variation, particularly affecting Medical and dental and Nursing staff groups as newly qualified staff graduate and become available for recruitment at set times in the year. As such, comparisons are made with the same quarter in the previous year.
• Staff recorded as doctors in training, dentists in training, or pre-registration pharmacists, are not included.
• The data collection methodology has not been applied consistently across all NHS organisations.
• Some organisations have reported a very low number (or a negative number) of vacancies across some staff groups, for some points in time; the number of vacancies reported is potentially under-estimated. Cwm Taf Morgannwg and Cardiff and Vale have implemented the agreed data collection method but both organisations reporting a very low number (or a negative number) of vacancies across some staff groups, for some points in time. The number of vacancies reported in these two health boards is potentially under-estimated.
• A number of data quality issues are highlighted in the Quality Information section. On balance, it is likely that these statistics slightly under-estimate the number of vacancies in NHS Wales.

Our statistics are produced to high professional standards set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics (UK Statistics Authority). They undergo regular quality assurance reviews to ensure that they meet customer needs. They are produced free from any political interference.

Data on Staff directly employed by the NHS and Sickness absence in the NHS is also published on a quarterly basis. The staff groups included there are similar to each other and are based on the occupation code of staff within ESR (with differences in inclusion of locums, some support staff working in nursing services and other staff (i.e. general payments and other non-medical staff)). Staff groups there are different to those within the vacancy statistics which are grouped based on the subjective code.

Relevance

These statistics can be used for monitoring of vacancy levels by NHS organisation in Wales, and comparisons by staff group.

We encourage users of the statistics to contact us to let us know how they use the data.

Accuracy

The methodology has been applied consistently across the majority of NHS organisations. However, one local health board (Aneurin Bevan) has been unable to supply the number of funded FTE posts through the finance general ledger to date. For the data supplied to date, data for the registered nursing, midwifery and health visiting staff group and the nursing, midwifery and health visiting support staff group has been supplied based on ‘establishment control’ through the ESR. This method is similar to obtaining funded FTE posts through the general ledger and is likely to be broadly comparable to the method used in other NHS organisations. Data for funded posts for all other staff groups has been supplied by asking the departments directly, which is unlikely to be consistent with the method used in all other NHS organisations.

FTE staff in post on ESR do not normally include bank, agency, contractors or other non-payroll staff. This may result in a small over-estimate of the number of vacancies and vacancy rate as there may have been staff delivering services but not recorded on ESR on the reference date.

The number of vacancies in the medical and dental staff group may be over-estimated due to differences in how FTEs are counted between the finance general ledger and ESR. A full-time member of this staff group may count as 1 FTE on ESR through their contract defined as 10 sessions per week. However, in practice some staff may work 12 sessions per week and may be recorded as 1.2 FTE on the finance general ledger. This would create a ‘vacancy’ of 0.2 through this data collection process, but in practice there is no vacancy as the staff member worked longer than their contracted hours.

Allocating staff to a subjective code in both the finance general ledger and on ESR involve manual processes and may result in a small number of staff having a mismatch of subjective codes between the two sources. As staff move posts, updates to FTEs per subjective code may be more timely on the finance general ledger than they are to the staff in post numbers through ESR. Therefore, there may be a small discrepancy in the number of vacancies reported and the actual number of vacancies on the reference date.

There can be a negative number of vacancies or vacancy rate if the number of staff in post on ESR exceeds the budgeted number of staff through the finance general ledger. This can happen for a number of reasons including where: an NHS organisation knowingly over-recruits staff, for example where they expect a high turnover of staff; certain non-recurring, short-term/temporary, capital or external funding for posts is not included in the budget for posts on the finance general ledger; staff budgets are allocated to a staff group on the finance general ledger, but in practice the budget is used to fund staff interchangeably or in multiple staff groups; internationally recruited nurses are temporarily recorded as support staff until registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and recorded as registered nurses.

Not all services within NHS organisations aim to recruit the full number of FTE budgeted staff. Some services may choose to use their staff budget flexibly to deliver their priorities and/or may choose to use their pool of temporary staff (nurse bank, locums, agency) flexibly throughout the year as demands on the service change. Therefore, a small number of reported ‘vacancies’ are planned in some circumstances.

Data presented may be revised in future editions of the statistical release.

Each edition of the release presents data correct as at the date submitted to Welsh Government.

In the unlikely event of incorrect data being published, revisions would be made and users informed in conjunction with our revisions, errors and postponements arrangements.

Timeliness and punctuality

Statistics are published as soon as possible after the relevant time period. There is typically a three-month lag between the reference period of the latest statistics and publication. 

All outputs adhere to the Code of Practice by pre-announcing the date of publication through the Upcoming Calendar. Furthermore, should the need arise to postpone an output this would follow our revisions, errors and postponements arrangements.

Coherence and comparability

The staff in post data is collected through the same HR/payroll system, Electronic Staff Record (ESR), which covers all NHS organisations in Wales and includes all staff directly employed by the NHS in Wales. However slightly different subjective codes could be allocated to posts across organisations which may impact on figures by staff group.

Statistics on NHS vacancies are published by the other UK countries: NHS England vacancy statistics; NHS Scotland workforce statistics; and the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care vacancy statistics. All four UK countries use different data collection methods to produce these statistics, reflecting the complex challenge of producing vacancy statistics, and are therefore not directly comparable. NHS England produce four different methods to calculate vacancies and related recruitment information for the NHS in England. Out of all the methods used in the other three UK countries, the NHS England (NHSE) method is most similar to how the data has been collected in Wales.

Accessibility

The statistics are published in an accessible, orderly, pre-announced manner on the Welsh Government website at 9.30am on the day of publication. Outputs are publicised on X and are available to download for free.

More detailed data is available at the same time on the StatsWales website and this can be manipulated online or downloaded into spreadsheets for use offline.

Plain English is used in our outputs as much as possible and they adhere to the Welsh Government’s accessibility policy.

All our webpage headlines are published in Welsh and English.

Dissemination

A brief statistical release is published with high level summaries and further interactive data tables are published on StatsWales. 

We welcome feedback on any aspect of these statistics which can be provided by email to stats.healthinfo@gov.wales

Produced by the Knowledge and Analytical Services, Welsh Government 

Last reviewed: October 2025