Travail to No Avail? Working Poverty in Australia Since 2000

During the last decade or so Australia has experienced high rates of economic growth and low levels of unemployment, conditions that are expected to have a favourable impact on working people at the lower end of the income distribution. But similar conditions in other countries have been accompanied by unexpectedly high rates of poverty among working people and their dependents. This paper investigates the extent and nature of working poverty in Australia. A recent Senate Inquiry claimed that working poverty is the ‘new face of poverty in post-industrial Australia’. The aim of this paper is to determine whether this claim is valid.