“The New York Times bestselling investigation into white-collar
unemployment from our premier reporter of the underside of
capitalism”--The New York Times Book Review
Americans'
working lives are growing more precarious every day. Corporations
slash employees by the thousands, and the benefits and pensions once
guaranteed by middle-class jobs are a thing of the past.
In
Bait and Switch,
Barbara Ehrenreich goes back undercover to explore another hidden
realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar
unemployed. Armed with the plausible résumé of a professional in
transition, she attempts to land a middle-class job. She submits to
career coaching, personality testing, and EST-like boot camps, and
attends job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search
ministries. She is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and--again and
again--rejected.
Bait
and Switch highlights the
people who have done everything right--gotten college degrees,
developed marketable skills, and built up impressive résumés--yet
have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster. There are
few social supports for these newly disposable workers, Ehrenreich
discovers, and little security even for those who have jobs. Worst of
all, there is no honest reckoning with the inevitable consequences of
the harsh new economy; rather, the jobless are persuaded that they
have only themselves to blame.
Alternately
hilarious and tragic, Bait
and Switch, like the
classic Nickel and Dimed, is a searing exposé of the cruel new
reality in which we all now live.