Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream Audiobook (Free)

The bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed goes back undercover to do for America’s ailing middle class what she did for the working poor.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage employees. Now, in BAIT AND Change, she enters another concealed realm of the economy-the globe of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible continue of a specialist ‘in transition,’ efforts to property a ‘middle class job’ undergoing career coaching and personality testing, then begins about Bait and Change: The (Futile) Quest for the American Fantasy trawling some EST-like ‘shoe camps,’ work fairs, ‘network occasions,’ and evangelical job-search ‘ministries.’ She gets an ‘picture makeover’ to prepare her for the organization globe and works very difficult to task the ‘earning attitude’ suggested for an effective job search. She actually is proselytized, scammed, lectured and, again and again, declined.

BAIT AND SWITCH highlights individuals who’ve done everything right-gotten university degrees, developed marketable abilities, and developed impressive resumes-yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial devastation and not due to the vagaries of the business enterprise routine. Today’s ultra-lean corporations take satisfaction in shedding their ‘surplus’ employees-plunging them, for a few months or years at a stretch, in to the twilight area of white-collar unemployment, where job-searching becomes a full-time job in itself. As Ehrenreich discovers, a couple of few social supports for the brand new throw-away workers-and little protection even for those who have jobs.

Just like the now classic Nickel and Dimed, BAIT AND SWITCH is alternately hilarious and tragic, a searing expose of economic cruelty where we least expect it.