Within-Sector Job Mobility and Worker Outcomes in England’s Adult Social Care Sector

England's adult social care sector faces persistently high staff turnover. This paper examines the effects of individual-level within-sector job mobility on hourly pay and working hours, and identifies the employer types and contractual arrangements that attract such mobility. Using an event-study difference-in-differences design, we show that job mobility increases hourly pay by 4.5% in the first year, rising to 6.1% after five years. Instrumental variable analyses either corroborate the difference-in-differences estimates or show higher impacts. Mobility also raises weekly working hours and reduces the likelihood of zero-hours contracts by around 7.0 percentage points. Employer-specific wage premia account for nearly half of observed pay gains, while worker–employer match effects play little role. Workers predominantly move to higher-paying employers — particularly local authorities and community-based services — into fixed-hours contracts and out of direct care roles. Moves into zero-hours contracts result in modest pay losses. Men experience larger pay gains from mobility than women.