Description
The bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed goes back undercover to do for Americaโs ailing middle class what she did for the working poorBarbara Ehrenreichโs Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible rรฉsumรฉ of a professional โin transition,โ she attempts to land a middle-class jobโundergoing career coaching and personality testing, then trawling a series of EST-like boot camps, job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She gets an image makeover, works to project a winning attitude, yet is proselytized, scammed, lectured, andโagain and againโrejected.
Bait and Switch highlights the people whoโve done everything rightโgotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive rรฉsumรฉsโyet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster, and not simply due to the vagaries of the business cycle. Todayโs ultra-lean corporations take pride in shedding their โsurplusโ employeesโplunging them, for months or years at a stretch, into the twilight zone of white-collar unemployment, where job searching becomes a full-time job in itself. As Ehrenreich discovers, there are few social supports for these newly disposable workersโand little security even for those who have jobs.
Like the now classic Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch is alternately hilarious and tragic, a searing exposรฉ of economic cruelty where we least expect it.
