Fiona Gibb, the RCM’s Director of Midwifery, on why this year’s NMC registration data is a warning.
Every year the NMC publishes a snapshot of who is joining, staying and leaving the professions it regulates.
When I read it, I look for one thing above all else: are enough midwives coming into the profession? This year, the answer is no.
The number of midwives on the register did grow this year, up 4.2% to 48,545. On the face of it, that sounds like good news, but the growth rate has already slowed down from 5.6% the year before. One to watch.
However, only 3,304 new midwives joined the register in 2025-26, down from 3,704 the year before. That’s a fall of more than one in ten new joiners in a single year.
Register numbers can continue to grow even while fewer new midwives enter the profession, but only for so long. When the pipeline into a profession shrinks this quickly, the growth built on top of it will not last. This is particularly concerning when we know many newly qualified midwives are struggling to secure their first NHS role.
For years, the RCM has warned governments across the UK, employers and the public that midwifery has a retention problem.
Burnout, unsafe staffing levels and poor working conditions are pushing experienced midwives out of the profession before they are ready to leave.
The NMC data points to a second challenge, fewer people are joining the midwifery profession in the first place. This cannot be a coincidence.
The same pattern shows up across the wider nursing and midwifery register too: new joiners fell by 21.4% this year while the number of people leaving rose by 5.3%. The NMC itself has said it will be monitoring closely to see whether this marks the start of a concerning trend.
Some of that decline reflects fewer internationally educated professionals joining the register. They accounted for 26.4% of all new joiners this year, down from a peak of 49.4% two years ago.
However, UK-educated joiners fell too, so the drop cannot be explained by international recruitment alone.
There is some good news. For the first time, more than a third of all registered nursing and midwifery professionals (33.8%) are from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds. UK-educated new joiners are becoming more diverse too, rising from 22.3% five years ago to 35% today.
This is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t change the workforce challenges we face.
The reasons people leave have remained consistent. Retirement remains the most reported reason followed by physical or mental health and burnout or exhaustion.
Alongside this, recent NHS England workforce data suggests more midwives under the age of 35 are leaving and we are losing experienced midwives mid-career – reducing the number of clinicians available to supervise students, support newly qualified colleagues and provide clinical leadership.
Taken together, these figures point to something bigger happening across the workforce.
Maternity services across all four UK nations are already operating with fewer midwives than they need. Fewer people joining the profession, newly qualified midwives struggling to find employment and experienced colleagues leaving practice are not isolated issues.
They are all part of the same workforce picture, and together they threaten the sustainability of maternity services.
Governments in all four UK nations need to treat this year’s fall in new joiners as an early warning.
Safe staffing, fair pay and working conditions that make midwifery a profession people want to join and build a career in are essential. Without them, today’s warning sign will deepen the crisis maternity services are already in.
