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Tuesday, September 14, 2010

The working poor

Thousands of families are living in poverty despite people being in employment, a new study has shown. Blame for the situation has been laid at the door of companies freezing people’s pay and reducing their hours, rather than laying them off, during the recession.

The Institute for Public Policy Research paper, In-work Poverty and the Recession, shows 14% of working households in the West Midlands are officially in poverty. The figure for the North East was 13%

More than 60% of poor children now live with parents who work, demonstrating that poverty is not simply the result of joblessness.

The figures also show the number of working adults who are “working poor” rose by 200,000 to 3.4 million.

IPPR’s Nick Pearce said “these figures clearly show that being in work is no guarantee of being out of poverty”.

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