We say wages are poor, but working in care pays as much as or more than working in a shop, or in a bar - that is, minimum wage, or slightly over.
Long and antisocial hours are often mentioned, but again, loads of jobs have that too - bar work, door work, the military, nursing, many performing arts etc. These are not less popular job choices for the hours spent at work.
Poor conditions and workplace stress also come up a lot, and this is one I happen to agree with. But if anything it's a reason more campaigning needs to be done to un-profit-ize social care (because it's largely property owners aka 'care providers' taking profits that most impacts staff wages and care budgets .. creating the 'market conditions' everyone else follows)
What I'm curious about is the non-material reasons that repel potential care workers. Emotional reasons, eg. the stigma attached to caring not for healthy but unlucky to be ill for a time people in hospital, but disabled and elderly people, who are already hidden away like something shameful (under the guise of 'safeguarding' usually) and as low status humans, the job of caring for them seen as less important than hospital work.
This is the real difficulty IMO. Though better wages and conditions would help considerably to begin with.
