The number of doctors holding a licence to practise in the UK continued to increase in 2024, but the pace of growth slowed compared with the previous year, according to the GMC’s Workforce report 2025.  

The report states that in 2024 there were 328,149 licensed doctors, compared with 272,255 in 2020. It also highlights a slowdown in yearonyear growth: from 2023 to 2024, the licensed workforce increased by 4.6%, lower than the 6.0% increase between 2022 and 2023.  

The GMC attributes the slower growth primarily to changes in international joiner and leaver patterns (analysed in detail in Part 1). It notes a “rapid increase” in nonUK PMQ doctors relinquishing their licence, with many unlikely to have ever worked in the UK, alongside a weaker effect from the number of nonUK PMQ doctors taking up a licence being lower than earlier trends would have suggested.  

The report also contextualises the workforce series by including doctors with Temporary Emergency Registration (TER), a status introduced in response to COVID19 and ended on 13 March 2024. The time series distinguishes licensed, not licensed and TER doctors from 2012 onwards.  

A key point in the report is that leaver numbers should be interpreted in the context of an expanding workforce. In Part 1 and again in Part 2, the GMC notes that when focusing on licensed doctors who had held a designated body connection (a marker strongly associated with employment), the leaving rate rose from 3.2% in 2023 to 3.6% in 2024.  

Headcount isn’t capacity: The GMC explicitly cautions that its headline counts are headcount, not fulltime equivalent (FTE). In Box 1, it notes that FTE-to-headcount ratios in secondary care across UK nations have been consistently above 0.9, indicating most staff work full time. But ratios are lower in primary care and have been trending downward—for example, England’s GP FTE-to-headcount ratio fell from 0.81 (Dec 2015) to 0.73 (Dec 2024).  

Why it matters: For planners, the combination of slower headcount growth and falling FTE ratios in some settings raises a practical question: will services experience the workforce as “growing” or “stretched”? The report’s emphasis on international joiner/leaver patterns and training pipeline pressures suggests the answer will differ by specialty and region, particularly where staffing models depend heavily on internationally qualified doctors and locally employed roles.