ORLANDO, Fla. – With America’s population aging, it makes sense that the industry expected to see the most growth in the next decade is the home health care industry.
The U.S. Census predicts that by 2034, older adults will outnumber people under the age of 18 for the first time in the country’s history.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that “home health and personal care aides” will need 739,800 new jobs by 2034, far more than any other occupation.
But right now, finding a home health aide, or a personal care aide, is a struggle across the country, and especially in Florida.
“We get these calls every single day from people across the state, calls from people who are approved for these services,” said Caitlyn Clibbon, an attorney with Disability Rights Florida. “The services have been prescribed and ordered, and they will be paid for by the insurance company. They just can’t get anyone to show up and staff these shifts.”
According to the BLS, the median pay for home health and personal care aides in 2024 was $34,900 a year, or $16.78 an hour.
That’s the second-lowest median salary on the BLS list. Only fast food workers make less.
What it takes to be a home health or personal care aide
Not much formal education is required to be a home health or personal care aide – typically just a high school diploma is needed.
Aides for home health agencies can follow training guidelines or pass competency tests or evaluations, depending on the industry, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. There’s no state license or certification for home health aides though.
A fact sheet is available on the state’s home health aide website.
But the work is intense, Clibbon said.
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Aides help people with chronic illnesses, disabilities, or older people with daily tasks like housekeeping, organizing, and helping with appointments, bathing or dressing, shopping for groceries, cooking, and more.
“They could be things like helping someone who physically needs to transition from, you know, a chair into a bed or to use the restroom. So they could be physically demanding, having to lift an entire human being and get them repositioned or into a new setting,” Clibbon said.
Then there are those aides with more training who help with life-sustaining tasks.
“There are people who are receiving in-home health services that if they did not receive them, they would die within a day or two. There are people who need to be suctioned and tube-fed, and those sorts of things, hourly or every other hour. So it’s a detail-oriented, high-intensity, you have to be paying attention 100% of the time kind of job,” Clibbon added.
As older people try hard to stay in their homes and not go to assisted living facilities, home health aides have become more important. According to an AARP report last year, 24 million U.S. adults age 50 and older live alone. That includes 1 in 3 people age 55 to 74, and half of people age 75 and older.
Florida last for home health aide availability
Florida has the second-largest population of people over the age of 65, but ranks 50th in the availability of home health and personal care aides, with roughly 16 aides per 1,000 seniors in the state, according to the 2025 America’s Health Rankings Senior Report by the United Health Foundation.
Florida also has nearly 3.2 million people with a disability, according to the 2024 American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, with 1.6 million under the age of 65.
“So most of these folks are going to be on Medicaid and Medicare. Often, private insurance does not cover these kinds of services anyway,” Clibbon said.
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According to Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration, which sets the Medicaid reimbursement rates, home health aides received a maximum fee of $18.04 per visit in 2025.
Personal care aides receive a maximum fee of $17.32 an hour.
“Some of these folks are literally making minimum wage to do a very important job,” Clibbon said. “I mean, imagine if this was your loved one that you were looking for a caregiver for. Like, you’re not just looking for the cheapest whatever you can find.”
Licensed practical nurses working as home health aides receive a maximum fee of $27.06 per visit, and registered nurses receive $32.07 per visit.
Recent efforts to increase training programs for nurses are one way the state is trying to get more people into the profession, but the Home Care Association of Florida also says the state has to do something about pay.
“Close the workforce gap by raising Medicaid reimbursement rates and increasing compensation for home care workers,” the agency said last year.
The Home Care Association of Florida is hosting a daylong event in Tallahassee next month to press state lawmakers on the issue during the annual legislative session.