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These people are the extreme edge of Europe's working poor:
a growing slice of the population that is slippping through the
long-vaunted European social safety net. Many, particularly the young,
are trapped in low-paying or temporary jobs that are replacing permanent
ones destroyed in the economic downturn.
Now, economists, European officials and social monitoring groups
are warning that the situation is about to get worse. As European
governments respond to the debt crisis by pushing for deep spending
cuts to close budget gaps and greater flexibility in their work forces,
"the population of working poor will explode," said Jean-Paul Fitoussi,
an economics professor at L'Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris.
To most Europeans, and especially the French, it seems this
should not be happening. With generous minimum wage laws and the world's
strongest welfare systems, Europeans are accustomed to thinking they
are more protected from a phenomenon they associate with the United
States and other laissez-faire economies.
But the European welfare state, designed to ensure that those
without jobs are provided with a basic income, access to health care
and subsidized housing, is proving ill prepared to deal with the steady
increase in the number of working people who do not make enough
to get by.
The trend is most alarming in hard-hit countries like Greece and
Spain, but it is rising even even in more prosperous nations like France
and Germany.
"France is a rich country," Mr.Fitoussi said. "But the working
poor are living in the same condition as in the 19th century".
