For eight months in a row the employment rate has increased, reaching 31.4 million people, another record high according to today’s figures from the Office for National Statistics. This is an important part of the government’s narrative about economic security for families, and one that they rightly champion, as work is the best route out of poverty. Real incomes have also picked up, and the economy is growing.

Yet new research of the adequacy of living standards in the six years after the economic downturn reveals a serious hole in the government’s economic record. We now need to be thinking about how people get on in work, rather than simply gaining a foothold.