The time-related underemployment of lone parents during welfare reform, recession and austerity: A challenge to in-work conditionality?

Reforms to UK social security benefits introduced between 2008-12 that increased lone parent obligations to enter employment coincided with economic crisis and government austerity. Increases in underemployment in the broader population during this period both in terms of unemployment and time-related underemployment raise questions regarding the extent to which lone parents not only managed to enter paid-work but obtain a sufficient number of employment hours. Activation policies have increased labour market exposure at a time of greater underemployment. At the same time high levels of economic hardship, in the context of stagnant real wage growth and benefit cuts linked to broader austerity policy, could place additional pressures on lone parent time-related underemployment where a desire for greater employment hours to improve household income is not met by availability. We present findings showing disproportionately high growth in time-related underemployment among lone mothers with at peak around one in five employed lone mothers with a youngest dependent child above five years of age experiencing such underemployment. The implications to in-work conditionality policies and the roll out of the UK’s new working age benefit Universal Credit are highlighted.