24 November 2014 - UK poverty report
Record numbers of working families in poverty due to low-paid jobs
Gwyn Topham (The Guardian)
Insecure, low-paid jobs are leaving record numbers of working families in poverty, with two-thirds of people who found work in the past year taking jobs for less than the living wage, according to the latest annual report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The research shows that over the last decade, increasing numbers of pensioners have become comfortable, but at the same time incomes among the worst-off have dropped almost 10% in real terms.
Painting a picture of huge numbers trapped on low wages, the foundation said during the decade only a fifth of low-paid workers managed to move to better paid jobs.
The living wage is calculated at £7.85 an hour nationally, or £9.15 in London – much higher than the legally enforceable £6.50 minimum wage.
Read on...
______________________________
The new poor
Cahal Milmo (The Independent)
Young adults and people in work are now more likely than pensioners to be in poverty in Britain following a huge increase in insecure employment such as zero hours contracts, an influential study warns today.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) says as many people in working families as in unemployed ones now live in poverty, after a decade of labour market upheaval which means a job is no longer a guarantee of an end to poverty.
Its annual report says the rise of part-time work and low-paid self-employment has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the number of under-25s living below the breadline as they struggle to cope with falling incomes, poor prospects and high costs from housing to food.
Read on...
____________________________
Generational gap
Staff (The Yorkshire Post)
POVERTY among the UK’s pensioners has fallen over the past decade but there has been a significant increase in the number of younger people living in poverty, according to a study published today.
Research by the York-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) also found a huge change in the labour market, with big rises in zero hours contracts, part-time work and low-paid self-employment.
Two thirds of jobless people finding work in the past year earned below the Living Wage, while only a fifth of low-paid workers found better paid jobs over the last 10 years, said the report. The study of official government data revealed that the average self-employed worker earns 13 per cent less than they did five years ago.
Pensioner poverty is now at the lowest level on record and the UK’s employment rate is close to a historic high but incomes are lower than 10 years ago, and average wages for full-time male workers have fallen by £1 an hour to £12.90.
Read on...
______________________________
Figures
Steve Doughty (The Daily Mail)
One and a half million working families have been plunged into poverty since 2004 - the year that Eastern European migration began to accelerate, a major new study has found.
The majority of the people now living below the poverty line are not dependent on benefits but come from homes where at least one person has a job, the study reveals.
Almost half of the families who now count as poor have not one but two people in work, it said.
The large-scale study carried out for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found the fall of working families into poverty does not date from the beginning of the recession in 2008.
Instead, it reported that the remorseless rise of poverty among people who work for a living began in 2004.
Read on...
Archives
Accédez aux archives de la revue
La Clé anglaise
Accédez à notre portail de ressources
[page;/html/cle/facebook/FacebookCode11.html]
Pour citer cette ressource :
"24 November 2014 - UK poverty report", La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), novembre 2014. Consulté le 06/10/2024. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/key-story/archives-revue-de-presse-2014/24-november-2014-uk-poverty-report