the.com/working poor

means People who hold down jobs — often full-time — yet still can't earn enough to escape poverty.

from A plain compound, not a coinage with a single birthdate: 'working' plus 'poor,' stitched together as an adjective-noun phrase once societies needed a label for a group that didn't fit the old assumption that employment itself was the cure for poverty. The term gained real traction in policy and economic writing in the 20th century, especially from the mid-1900s onward, as labor statisticians and journalists needed a way to describe people who were employed yet still fell below poverty lines — a category the earlier, simpler divide of 'employed vs. unemployed' couldn't capture.