We celebrate nurses and carers as ‘selfless’ and ‘compassionate,’ but we rarely call them ‘highly skilled’ or ‘technical experts.’ This needs to change. Words don’t just describe work – they define how we value it.

Healthcare isn’t known for amazing pay. In the UK, a care worker supporting the elderly in their own home might earn just above minimum wage. A nurse in a charity-run hospice could be making significantly less than a junior manager in a supermarket. This isn’t just frustrating – it contradicts the very market forces that supposedly dictate wages. If salaries are based on supply and demand, why do some of the most in-demand jobs remain some of the worst paid?

The Financial Times’ latest ranking of the UK’s best employers highlights this paradox. Many of the highest-rated workplaces were in health and social care, despite offering relatively low pay. Martin Jones, CEO of Home Instead, explained that “when people join health and social care, they do so because it’s a calling and not necessarily because of a desire for money.” This narrative is repeated across the sector. But while it may be true that people enter these roles with a deep sense of purpose, I have to ask: why is passion being spoken of in relation to pay?

Take social care, where wages are among the lowest in the labour market. The average salary for a home care worker hovers around £22,000 a year, barely above the living wage, despite the physically and emotionally demanding nature of the job. In many elderly care homes, staff work long hours under immense pressure, providing intimate, complex care while managing medical needs, yet they often earn less than workers in retail or hospitality. Meanwhile, a high-flying machine learning engineer can take home seven times more in wages, despite also being in a high-demand, low-supply field. If market forces worked as expected, this sector would be seeing pay rises. There is an undeniable shortage of workers, yet wages remain stagnant.

This contradiction stems from how we talk about care work. The language we use shapes how we value professions. For healthcare, we use words like “compassion,” “kindness,” and “selflessness,” rather than “expertise,” “crisis management,” or “technical decision-making.”

This does two things.

First, it lowers confidence about wage expectations – both for workers and for society at large. When a profession is framed around duty rather than skill, demanding higher pay feels almost inappropriate. No one asks whether lawyers or engineers are passionate about their work before justifying their salaries. Yet for nurses and carers, passion is assumed to be part of the reward.

Second, this narrative suppresses skill-based pay differentiation. In most industries, specialised skills command higher wages. But in healthcare, we don’t build narratives around skills – we build them around sacrifice. A home care worker managing dementia patients isn’t just “providing support” – they’re handling complex health conditions, administering medication, and making clinical decisions that directly impact outcomes. A palliative care nurse isn’t just “comforting” patients, they’re navigating intricate pain management, coordinating with specialists, and making high-stakes interventions under immense emotional pressure. These jobs demand the same level of expertise, decision-making, and problem-solving that command high salaries elsewhere, yet the vocabulary we use to describe them keeps their value low.

If we want to fix this, we need to shift the language of care work from one of sentimentality to one of skill and excellence. Healthcare professionals use critical thinking, crisis management, and advanced problem-solving every day. At the same time, structural frameworks around them fail to document their work in these terms. A maternity support worker juggling multiple patients is demonstrating logistical expertise. A social worker safeguarding vulnerable children is exercising high-level judgment, emotional dexterity, and strategic foresight. These roles require more than just goodwill; they demand competence and technical skill.

Now of course I am writing this because I am an advocate for fairness. But this is also about the future. According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, roles in care, nursing, and social work are projected to be among the largest-growing jobs by 2030. But an influx of workers into these roles will only happen if we revisit pay. Purpose alone won’t fill vacancies and won’t ensure people can support their families while doing this work.

Passion might keep people in the job, fair pay is what will keep the sector from collapsing. If we don’t start valuing these roles as professions rather than acts of sacrifice, we will continue to see burnout, shortages, and a system in crisis. It’s time to change the narrative because words don’t just describe work – they define its worth.