Except this is a Loach movie, and along with being one of Earth’s most venerable and venerated directors, he’s almost without peer as a filmmaker formidably committed to exposing the sins of our wages. For six decades, his film and television work — “Kes,” “Riff-Raff,” Ladybird, Ladybird,” “My Name Is Joe,” “Looking for Eric,” “I, Daniel Blake” — has looked at regular working folks and, often, what that work costs them. He knows you’re unlikely to cancel anything. But he damn sure wants you to think long and hard about that next one-click buy.

Paul Laverty has written many of Loach’s scripts, including this one. He’s attuned to seeding problems early so that they sprout distress later. Abby’s employment becomes as central to the drama as Ricky’s. With the car sold, she has to take the bus, and like her husband, she works for a subcontractor that has no evident concern for her humanity, let alone that of the clients whom she treats with maximal warmth and heroic empathy. She, too, works long, difficult hours and has to manage her family and her clients on the fly. Her title is care worker; the marvel of Honeywood’s performance is how to heart she’s taken the term.

The Turners have two kids, a teen angel named Liza Jane (Katie Proctor) and an older, adolescent punk called Seb (Rhys Stone), whose rebellious street art compounds the household stress and jeopardizes Ricky’s ability to meet his relentless delivery quotas. Loach knows how to direct actors to appear true, to be capable of surprise. Stone, for instance, is acting his surname, but there’s something soft and knowing in this guy that’s always absorbingly present. And Hitchen sees to it that Ricky’s delusions, stubbornness and iffy decision-making never tip into stupidity. He’s peevish, slack-jawed, a little rascally. He loves his family and his football team (Man U, not Newcastle, as one appalled parcel recipient observes).