This chapter provides a comparative overview of the UK and France’s policy strategies towards worker economic protection. The first section describes the distinct labour market, welfare and political institutions in each welfare state, which prior to the 1990s were quite aligned with their different policy strategies to support low-income workers. The second section maps variation in subsequent reform trajectories and explains why these represent a case of qualified policy convergence. From the late 1990s governments in both countries made use of wage supplements to pursue similar goals; however, policies differed in terms of their specific design and logics. Furthermore, in-work benefit reforms occurred alongside a process of partial convergence in related areas (minimum wages and social assistance) without engendering the wholesale convergence of social protection and labour market governance. These developments pose theoretical puzzles for existing welfare state scholarship.