£20 is just a couple of hours work.
For some. A few minutes for some others.
For people in a minimum wage job who are receiving UC it takes considerably more than an extra couple of hours work to end up with an extra £20.
UC claimants have to work more than six hours extra a week to get that.
Minimum wage for over-23s is £8.91.
Claimants are subject to a 63p reduction in their benefits for every £1 they earn if they make more than £293 a month.
That means many minimum-wage claimants only gain £3.30 for each extra hour they work – before any National Insurance, Income Tax and pension contributions are deducted.
So before NI etc, that £20 needs over 6 hours work, and when accounting for NI etc, the Resolution Foundation calculates that Universal Credit claimants take home as little as £2.24 for every hour worked, i.e. almost nine hours.
The Foundation says that the 63 per cent taper rate in Universal Credit, which is based on post-tax earnings, means that Universal Credit claimants only take home 37p of extra pound earned (due to a lower benefit award), falling to 25.2p if they earn enough to pay income tax and employee National Insurance.
From April this will fall to 24.7p as National Insurance rises.