Better off in work?

The benefit reforms are supposed to give people an incentive to work by making them better off in work. This blog post  from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that work can give marginally more disposable income if you ignore transport and other in-work costs but points out:

The fact that you’re not better off on benefits doesn’t imply that working poverty is not a problem – both are still poverty but they are experienced differently with varying consequences. And many go from unemployment to low-paid work and back again, with 4.8 million different people claiming JSA in the last two years. The real issue is that households relying on either the national minimum wage or out-of-work benefits do not have a standard of living that is sufficient or acceptable in the UK today. There really is no need to set them against each other.