[pluma]

The problem isn't that people have no jobs, the problem is that people have no money.

This is a fundamental difference some people seem to find hard to understand. It's not vital to reduce unemployment, it's vital to reduce poverty. Reducing unemployment is merely an attempt to achieve that end.

Yes, a job presents a way to modify your income and a good job is a job that provides you with a way to influence your income via your performance (i.e. if you become better at it, you get more money or can switch to a job that pays more), but the problem poor people have isn't that they don't have jobs, it's that they don't have money -- whether they don't have money because they don't have an income or don't have money because their income is consumed by their essential expenses doesn't make any difference, other than that if they already have a job they don't have the option of simply getting a job to make more money.

In that regard having a job that barely covers your expenses and doesn't provide any financial mobility is almost worse than not having a job: if you don't have a job, at least you have the theoretical possibility of improving your situation by getting one.