Glasgow · Four clear reasons
Why poverty is worse in Glasgow
jobs in Glasgow for every working-age adult living here. There are more jobs than adults. Scotland: 0.82.
What this means
Glasgow's figures are not bad luck, and they are not the fault of ordinary Glaswegians.
Decisions made long ago left lasting damage. Today the city is full of jobs, but a job can still mean low pay, too few hours or an insecure rota.
Benefit cuts hit Glasgow harder because more of the families most affected live here. High rent then leaves less money for everything else.
2014/15: Where the decade starts. 27 in every 100 Glasgow children are growing up poor.
2016/17: Benefits are frozen while prices rise. Every year, the money buys a little less.
2019/20: Five years of rising — and this is before the pandemic has even arrived.
2020/21: Benefits go up: the £20 uplift, plus furlough. Watch the figures dim. Child poverty falls.
2021/22: The extra money is taken away again. It goes straight back up.
2023/24: 36 in every 100 children. The worst in Scotland, and the fastest rise anywhere.
The decade, in your hands — keep scrolling
36 in every 100 children. The worst in Scotland, and the fastest rise anywhere.
End Child Poverty / Loughborough University · after housing costs
36 in every 100 Glasgow children · 39,319 children
01Reason one
Past decisions did lasting damage
Glasgow does worse even when it is compared with cities that are just as poor. There are about 15% more deaths than in Liverpool and Manchester, rising to about 30% more among people under 65.
Researchers spent years asking why. The answer is not Glaswegian culture, weather or diet. It is what happened to the city:
- Glasgow stayed badly overcrowded for longer than similar cities. The harm was passed down through families.
- After the war, plans moved many younger workers and families to the . The people left in Glasgow were more likely to be older, ill or poor.
- Tenements were replaced by large housing estates far from jobs and services.
- When factory jobs disappeared in the 1980s, Glasgow's response protected people less than the response in the English cities.
People in Glasgow today did not cause this. But the damage helps explain why the same cut can hurt Glasgow more than another place.
Glasgow has more jobs than working-age adults. A job can still leave a family without enough to live on.
ONS jobs density; UK minimum-wage rates; JRF / Loughborough minimum-income research
02Reason two
There are plenty of jobs. Pay and hours can still leave people short.
Glasgow is not short of work. There are more jobs inside the city than there are working-age people living in it. What the city is short of is jobs that pay enough to live on.
That is why the employment chart and the child poverty chart point in opposite directions. More people in work, more children in poverty.
1.08
jobs in the city for every working-age resident
0.82 across Scotland · 2021
£24,785
a year on the legal minimum, before tax
£12.71 an hour at 37.5 hours · fewer hours means less
76%
of a basic, decent life that covers
69% for a lone parent with two children · JRF
Before you read the chart below: the £796.50 on it is not the average Glasgow wage. It covers a selected sample of full-time employee jobs and excludes every part-time job and all self-employment. I explain what it does and does not measure, including the full spread of pay and what it means after tax.
Pay in a restricted sample of full-time employee jobs
Gross weekly pay in one April pay period · cash terms · 2008–2025 · ONS ASHE
See the numbers behind this chart
| Year | Selected jobs in Glasgow | Selected jobs held by Glasgow residents | Selected jobs held by Scottish residents |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | £459.80 | £434.10 | £462.90 |
| 2009 | £476.00 | £451.70 | £471.20 |
| 2010 | £476.80 | £452.50 | £486.60 |
| 2011 | £486.40 | £460.00 | £487.20 |
| 2012 | £498.90 | £474.30 | £498.30 |
| 2013 | £523.60 | £483.90 | £507.90 |
| 2014 | £539.10 | £497.10 | £518.60 |
| 2015 | £538.30 | £514.90 | £527.00 |
| 2016 | £546.70 | £522.20 | £536.00 |
| 2017 | £558.20 | £519.70 | £547.40 |
| 2018 | £573.50 | £549.70 | £562.70 |
| 2019 | £589.50 | £566.90 | £578.30 |
| 2020 | £621.70 | £592.50 | £595.00 |
| 2021 | £638.30 | £620.40 | £619.90 |
| 2022 | £670.80 | £635.70 | £641.30 |
| 2023 | £753.80 | £689.00 | £709.40 |
| 2024 | £757.30 | £721.50 | £740.10 |
| 2025 | £796.50 | £745.50 | £775.60 |
The technical detail
Why the figure looks too high. It is gross pay, before income tax and National Insurance are taken off. It is the middle of full-time employee jobs only, so every part-time job and every self-employed person is excluded. And it counts overtime, bonuses and shift premiums, not basic salary. A single profession's advertised salary is not the same statistic as the median across all full-time jobs.
For scale, the Scottish Government's own ASHE 2025 release puts median gross weekly pay for full-time employees in Scotland at £773.80 — about £40,200 a year. A city figure slightly above that is expected, because cities concentrate higher-paying employment.
The figure only covers full-time jobs, and that is the biggest reason it feels wrong. Part-time work is paid far less: in Scotland in 2025 the median part-time employee earned £304.30 a week if a woman and £267.10 if a man — roughly £14,000 to £16,000 a year. Around 29% of Glasgow's employee jobs are part-time and none of them appear in the line on this chart, so the chart is not a picture of what a typical worker earns.
Minimum-wage work is also a smaller share of employment than most people assume. The ONS puts around 2.0 million UK workers at or below the minimum wage in 2025 — about 6.6% of the workforce, roughly one in fifteen — so most jobs sit somewhere between the legal minimum and the middle of the range rather than clustered at the floor.
The gap from the minimum wage is also smaller than it looks, and it is deliberate. The National Living Wage is set by law at two-thirds of median hourly earnings — that is the Low Pay Commission's remit from government. So the middle of full-time pay sitting around one and a half times the minimum is not an odd result; it is the arithmetic of how the minimum wage is defined. Full-time minimum wage is about £24,800 a year against a Glasgow full-time median near £41,400: roughly 1.7 times, not double.
ASHE samples employee jobs from PAYE records. This displayed series is then restricted to jobs classed as full-time, paid at adult rates and unaffected by absence. It excludes every part-time job, self-employment, employees outside PAYE, junior rates and pay affected by sickness or other absence. A person with more than one job can be counted more than once.
For scale, a separate ONS count found 128,000 of Glasgow's 442,000 employee jobs were part-time in 2024 — 29%. None of those part-time jobs is represented in this full-time series.
Gross weekly pay can include overtime, bonuses, shift premiums and allowances. ONS normally defines full-time as more than 30 paid hours a week, with a separate rule for teaching jobs.
Figures are in cash, not adjusted for inflation. Compare the lines against each other within a year — that comparison is valid. Do not read the upward slope as people getting better off; most of it is price rises.
03Reason three
Cuts hit Glasgow families harder
Some families are much more likely to be poor: families with a disabled person, single parents, larger families and some minority ethnic families.
Glasgow has more of these families than the Scottish average. So a UK-wide benefit cut can hurt more people here. The rule may be the same everywhere, but the harm is not.
Glasgow also houses almost all asylum seekers sent to Scotland through the UK scheme. The UK department that sends people here does not cover all the costs for the city.
04Reason four
Rent leaves families with too little
The figures look at money left . Glasgow rents rose faster than the . Families have to fill the gap using money meant for food, heating and everything else.
Glasgow declared a housing emergency in November 2023. The council says it does not have enough money to meet its legal duty to house people. Because poverty is counted after rent, housing has a direct effect on the figure.
Where this comes from
Walsh, McCartney, Collins, Taulbut and Batty — GCPH, NHS Health Scotland, UWS and UCL, 2016
The explanation for Glasgow's excess mortality relative to Liverpool and Manchester, and the historical policy causes.ScotPHO
The size of Glasgow's excess mortality after adjusting for deprivation.UK Government
The legal hourly minimums from 1 April 2026: £12.71 for workers aged 21 and over, £10.85 for ages 18–20, and £8 for under-18s and eligible apprentices.Joseph Rowntree Foundation / Loughborough University
The finding that a single adult working full time at the legal minimum reached 76% of the Minimum Income Standard, while a lone parent with children aged 3 and 7 reached 69%.Office for National Statistics, via NOMIS
Median gross weekly pay within the published full-time employee-job sample, 2008–2025, on both the workplace and residence bases.Office for National Statistics
The sample, exclusions and definition of gross weekly pay behind the pay charts.Office for National Statistics, via NOMIS
Jobs per working-age resident, Glasgow and Scotland. Published for Glasgow to 2021.Glasgow City Council / Scottish Parliament
Temporary accommodation spending and the projected unfunded homelessness shortfall to 2027/28.Migration Scotland
Glasgow's share of Scotland's dispersed asylum seekers.Understanding Glasgow / Glasgow Centre for Population Health
In-work poverty, neighbourhood variation in child poverty, and workless household figures.The reasons are clear. Now ask what will change.
See the practical changes experts say would help, then enter your postcode and email the people who can make them happen.
One simple next step
Every claim on this page is drawn from a named published source. If you think one of them is wrong, tell me and I will correct it publicly.