In Europe, social exclusion has also been used to refer to a lack of wage-earning employment. In this case, its opposite would not be social participation, but participation in the labour market (although having a job might serve as a proxy indicator for participation in other spheres of life). The third distinction stems from the idea that social exclusion is an extreme form of poverty, those who are excluded would be in the worst situation, the poorest of the poor (Gordon, 1998).