One million Australians make up the "working poor", living in households in which at least one adult has a job but earns only the federal minimum wage, research shows.
The research on low-income households is based on unpublished Bureau of Statistics data and the Federal Government's latest Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. The analysis of the survey data found there were an estimated 356,000 households making up the working poor in 2005.
They represented 6.5 per cent of all households where at least one person was employed. A total of 982,000 people, including 213,000 dependent children aged 14 or under, lived in the working-poor households.
In a joint submission to the Fair Pay Commission, state and territory Labor governments have presented a statistical snapshot of the low-income households that rely most heavily on the wage-fixing body's decisions on minimum wage rates.
The research also showed employees on the federal minimum wage - $13.47 an hour for adults - had little access to the training they would need to secure better-paid work.
The joint submission says the commission should "recognise that for a large group of workers regular minimum wage increases provide the only form of upward earnings mobility".
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