It’s relatively straightforward to make a case about the existence of a ‘poverty premium’. It just is more expensive to live when you’re poor. Just consider the cost of local shops (if you don’t have a car) compared to out of town supermarkets, the way ATMs charge for withdrawals on poorer estates or how pre-payment meters use higher tariffs.

Our forthcoming research, however, made clear that the group worst affected by austerity is working age people not in full-time employment. They were the people skipping meals and switching off the heating during cold snaps more than any other. They reported more worsening health – mental and physical. They missed out most on occasions with friends and had fallen out with family.

I imagine Iain Duncan Smith might sit back and think his work is done, if welfare reform is about starving the unemployed into submission. Surely their best option now its to find employment?

There are a couple of issues to point out, however:  I never said that group included just the unemployed. It includes those in part-time work, students and carers. Those caring for others reported the most stress about being under pressure from the Job Centre to return to work, despite having clear emotional ties to unpaid work already. Almost a quarter of Quids in! readers told us they were unfit to work. All these are who are suffering most as a result of welfare reform, rising costs and a tougher regime over jobseekers.

So the hidden challenge for the under-employed and workless, is how they’re supposed to find work when under the cosh from the impacts of deepening poverty.

X% of working age people not in full-time employment are going without meals and x% are turning off the heating when they’re cold for fear of rocketing fuel bills. No surprise then that x% report that their physical health has been affected in the past 12 months. And no surprise that the number of people telling us they’re unfit to work has increased since our last research in 2012.

X% of working age people not in in full-time employment said they had felt increasingly frightened, anxious or depressed in the past year. Mental health issues can be a major barrier to even the most low skilled employment – the nature of the work often doesn’t come into it.

This group is also less likely to have access to IT or the knowhow to use it. This tallies with the accepted correlation between poverty and low attainment of skills and education, where literacy can already be a bar before a jobseeker even sits down at a computer.

Add to all this the low confidence experienced by working age people not in full-time work and even IDS might wonder how any of them get a job at all.

And here’s the rub. If we change the lens through which we think about jobseekers. If, for one moment, we look at Benefits Street and the string of Channel 5 documentaries about life on the dole through the eyes of employers, we might start to understand the hopelessness of unemployment for hundreds of thousands of jobseekers.

With the best will in the world, people with poor (and worsening) health, low confidence and weak skills will always be at the back of the jobs queue. Making their situation worse is not only immoral, (our survey respondents hit hardest by austerity were those already living below the poverty line), it is counter-productive. It’s time to be outraged about the poverty premium and it’s time to look at unemployment through different eyes.