We have to consider the implications of working poverty in Canada’s richest city. The working poor cannot buy homes on their wages and many use food banks and other services to meet their basic needs. At the same time, shifts in the labour market suggest declining opportunities for a growing segment of the working poor. Good social policy and programs are clearly important tools in the fight against poverty, and moderation in the growth of the working poor in Toronto is welcome news. But that Toronto has a higher rate of working poverty in 2012 than in 2006, while employment rates fell, is perplexing and troubling. How this happened — shifts, trends, and factors at play — is the subject of this report.