Of the 8.5 million workers in 2024, 2 percent were poor.
Poor workers have less work experience than all workers. In 2024, 63 percent had less than four years of paid work as their main source of income. Among all workers, this is 18 percent. Of the poor employees who worked in 2024 but not before, 95 percent had a flexible contract or worked part-time. A quarter of poor workers would like to work more hours. Among all workers, this is 7 percent.
Almost a quarter of poor workers were under 25 years old in 2024, compared to 9 percent of all workers. Poor workers also more often lived alone or in a single-parent household (67 percent) than the entire group (25 percent).
In 2024, 26 thousand more workers were poor than a year earlier. The number of poor workers increased among both employees and self-employed persons. In the five years before, the number of poor workers had slowly declined. This decline was partly due to temporary corona support measures and energy measures. In 2024, the energy allowance expired.
In 2024, self-employed without personnel (zzp’ers) were poor at 4.4 percent, more than twice as often as employees and self-employed with personnel (zmp’ers). In numbers, employees with 118 thousand were still the majority among poor workers.
Long-term poverty also occurs more among zzp’ers than among employees and zmp’ers. In 2024, 1.1 percent of zzp’ers had lived in a poor household for three years or more. Among employees and zmp’ers, this was 0.2 and 0.4 percent.
In total, 30 thousand workers’ households were long-term poor in 2024. That is 1.5 thousand more than a year earlier. This number also increased for the first time after years of decline but is still much lower than in 2020. Then, 46 thousand workers were long-term poor.
The income of poor workers in 2024 was on average 25 percent below the poverty line. This means that half of them had an income more than 25 percent below the poverty line. Among poor zzp’ers (33 percent) and zmp’ers (37 percent), the income shortfall was greater than among poor employees (22 percent).
Poor workers generally had a greater income shortfall than people with other income sources, such as benefits. On average, across all poor people, the income shortfall in 2024 was 19 percent below the poverty line.
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