Insecure work is a strain on millions of families across the UK. The government acknowledges that it needs to be fixed. But when it comes to the specific actions proposed, explains JRF’s Katie Schmuecker, it’s a case of “must try harder”

Effort. Try a bit harder. This is what the prime minister is asking people to do in order to improve their living standards. When asked recently about working people being hit by cuts to Universal Credit he said: “My strong, strong preference, and I believe this is the instinct of most people in this country, is for people to see wages rise through their efforts … rather than welfare.”

But from care staff and retail workers to delivery drivers and warehouse staff, the Covid-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on the huge amounts of effort that millions of low-paid people already put in every day to provide our nation’s essential services. Their effort alone, however, has not been enough to improve their quality of life. The problem is not just that their pay remains stuck at too low a level. It is also the unreliability of the work and its failure to fit around the rest of their lives. As the pandemic hit, 4.2 million employees counted as low paid (that is, they got less than two-thirds of the median wage) and some 2.8 million employees reported varying hours, two thirds of whom also reported varying pay. In sum, getting a job and working hard at it should be a route to a more comfortable life, but too often it is blocked.

Life is a particular challenge for the disproportionate number of people who, however much they strive, face both problems at once: pay that is not only low but also unreliable. Crunching the government’s own Annual Population Survey reveals that almost a third of the lowest-paid fifth of workers are exposed to both variable hours and pay, more than twice the proportion as found among the richest fifth. It is very often the hardestworking and hardest-pressed of people— like those care workers whom Madeleine Bunting interviewed on p2—who have the most juggling of unreliable earnings to do. Where low pay and insecurity coincide, families suffer. It’s hard to plan time with the kids when you don’t know if you’ll be working, and impossible to plan budgets if you don’t know when or how much you’ll be paid.