69% of Families in Poverty Are Already Working. So Why Are They Still Poor?
The story we tell about poverty is wrong. It's not a story about people who don't work — it's about a system where working isn't enough. Nearly 7 in 10 families in poverty have at least one working adult.
The story we tell about poverty — especially mothers in poverty — is that they need to work harder, earn more, make better choices. It's a story that lets us avoid the harder truth: most mothers in poverty are already working. The problem isn't effort. It's a system that has decided their labour isn't worth enough to live on.
Working and Still Poor
69% of families in poverty include at least one working adult
In Canada, single-parent families headed by mothers have a 23.8% poverty rate — nearly four times higher than couple families with children (6.3%). Nearly half of women-led lone-parent families experience food insecurity. (Statistics Canada)
The minimum wage in most Canadian provinces and American states does not cover the basics when measured against the actual cost of living — housing, food, childcare, utilities. A full-time worker earning $16/hour in most Canadian cities earns roughly $31,000 before taxes. After taxes, after childcare, after rent — there is nothing left.
The Wage Floor Problem
Lone mothers earn an average of $25,300 per year in Canada — $15,000 less than lone fathers, despite the same cost of living and the same number of hours in a day. The gap is not in effort. It is in every system that surrounds their work: the gender pay gap, the motherhood penalty, the lower wages in female-dominated sectors, and the unpaid caregiving labour that sits on top of the paid work.
“When working full-time doesn't pay for rent and childcare, the problem isn't the worker. It's the wages.”
Ending working poverty for mothers requires confronting several things at once: minimum wages that actually cover life, childcare that doesn't consume income, benefits that phase out gradually instead of cutting off suddenly, and a reckoning with the fact that our economy is built on women's underpaid and unpaid labour. These aren't radical ideas. They're just the truth.
Becky Tsadilas
Founder, Momera — Movement of Mothers Ending Poverty. Based in Cochrane, Alberta. hello@momera.ca