Nearly 8% with jobs are ‘working poor’

Nearly 8% of those working in Ireland are part of the “working poor” and are at risk of poverty, according to a leading anti-poverty organisation.

In a report examining the Government’s failure to meets its own and European targets for creating jobs and fighting poverty, Social Justice Ireland also noted how the Government, through the IDA, was creating the wrong type of jobs.

The European Commission recently noted that just 12% of those unemployed in Ireland at the end of 2011 were previously employed in managerial, technical or professional backgrounds. This means that most of the unemployed are too underqualified to get jobs in the hi-tech sector.