The Joseph Rowntree Foundation's annual Poverty and Social Exclusion report is just out. This offers an early analysis of the current government's policies on poverty and social exclusion as well as providing some evidence on the effects of recent welfare reform. One area of concern the report higlights is underemployment: of the 64. million people lacking the paid work they want, 1.4 million are in part-time work. Figures from ONS also underline this problem: they report a 47% increase in underemployment since the economic downturn in 2008. A BBC report quotes Andrew Sissons of the Work Foundation, who notes that "of the half-a-million new jobs created in the UK in the past two years, about 70% have been part-time."
