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Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Paperback – Aug. 2 2011

by Barbara Ehrenreich (Author)

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Our sharpest and most original social critic goes "undercover" as an unskilled worker to reveal the dark side of American prosperity.

Millions of Americans work full time, year round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- can be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered. Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, she worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. She lived in trailer parks and crumbling residential motels. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled," that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you int to live indoors.

Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal -- in quite the same way again.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
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Picador
Publication date

Aug. 2 2011
Dimensions

14.5 x 1.69 x 21.18 cm
ISBN-10

0312626681
ISBN-13

978-0312626686
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“Captivating . . . promise that you will read this explosive little book cover to cover and pass it on to all your friends and relatives.” ―The New York Times

“Impassioned, fascinating, profoundly significant, and wildly entertaining . . . Nickel and Dimed is not only important but transformative in its insistence that we take a long hard look at the society we live in.” ―Francise Prose, O, The Oprah Magazine

“Valuable and illuminating . . . Barbara Ehrenreich is our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism.” ―The New York Times Book Review

“Jarring . . . fully of riveting grit . . . this book is already unforgettable.” ―The New York Times

“Reading Ehrenreich is good for the soul.” ―Molly Ivins

“Ehrenreich is passionate, public, hotly lucid, and politically engaged.” ―Chicago Tribune

“Ehrenreich's scorn withers, her humor stings, and her radical light shines on.” ―The Boston Globe

“One of today's most original writers.” ―The New York Times

“Barbara Ehrenreich is smart, provocative, funny, and sane in a world that needs more of all four.” ―Diane Sawyer

About the Author

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of Nickel and Dimed, Blood Rites, The Worst Years of Our Lives (a New York Times bestseller), Fear of Falling, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and eight other books. A frequent contributor to Time, Harper's, Esquire, The New Republic, Mirabella, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine, she lives near Key West, Florida.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; First Edition (Aug. 2 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312626681
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312626686
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 227 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.5 x 1.69 x 21.18 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #325,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #127 in Labour Policy (Books)
- #199 in Economics of Labour & Industrial Relations
- #221 in Labor & Industrial Economic Relations

Customer Reviews:
4.4 3,343 ratings

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Barbara Ehrenreich

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BARBARA EHRENREICH is the author of fourteen books, including the bestselling Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. She lives in Virginia, USA.

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Halifax Educator

How American social policy has failed workers.

Reviewed in Canada on September 26, 2022

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This book was a comprehensive ethnography about people who are barely getting by. The author became a min wage earner to study the lives of those that society has forgotten. The book was absolutely amazing. A must read for any person concerned about the level of inequality in the US.

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Dennis

Eye-opening without being alarmist

Reviewed in Canada on August 11, 2013

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Too often writers of political/social commentary expect their readers to accept anecdotal evidence as though it were a series objectively quantified observations. In my opinion, Ehrenreich avoids this trap nicely. She blends both personal experience and research, with an inside look at what it means to be a member of the working poor in America. Her personal views are apparent but she does not attempt hide them.

She walks the reader through days in life of everyone from a maid to a wal-mart greeter. In every case, the reader is a brief glimpse into the incredible struggle that many hardworking individuals face when trying to lift themselves off the bottom rung of society's ladder.

For anyone interested in learning more about the incredible struggles of hardworking, low-wage members of our society Nickel and Dimed is a must read.

3 people found this helpful

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Ilona

an eye opener

Reviewed in Canada on December 19, 2009

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In spite of some negative reviews I decided to give this book a read and I'm glad I did. The author did an admirable job of conveying the soul and health destroying conditions of the working poor. I could empathize because I had worked under these same conditions in my summer holidays during high school and college.
To alleviate these conditions would require everyone to get an education in order to understand their rights and not be cowed by their so called superiors. I read that health care was almost non=existant for the working poor(in the U.S.A.) as is day care, healthy food and decent livable wages.

The most disturbing statement in the whole book is that the goods and services the middle and upper classes take for granted are provided on the backs of the working poor.

This book is an eye opener and makes me want to run right out there and right the wrongs.

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Nancy Elliott Bijl

I have shared this book with many. Must read ...

Reviewed in Canada on October 4, 2014

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I have shared this book with many. Must read for anyone who believes there is an equal playing field in today's job market and all that is needed to is for individuals to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The American Dream is a myth for many and at times is used to perpetuate the notion that 'you are where you want to be". Must read for parents of youth or anyone working for min wage. Let it open your mind to understand more options (not just an attitude change) may be necessary. Follow it by reading The Defining Decade and you'll have a realistic view of today's economy and the problems today's young adults are facing.

One person found this helpful

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Eric D Savage

Eye-opning read

Reviewed in Canada on October 5, 2014

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I heard about this book years and had never gotten to read it. Biy oh boy, this is an eye-opening read !

Changed my perpective on what the author calls the "working poor" that we count on to make our middle-class lives easier. Excellent read for all people, especially young people in their 20's to see how lucky most of them are.

2 people found this helpful

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Simon Rompre

Good read, it outlines very well what goes on ...

Reviewed in Canada on July 26, 2016

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Good read, it outlines very well what goes on in so many places where profits at all cost takes priority over all other aspects of business. It explains well why there is a high turn over of workers in so many low pay jobs.

2 people found this helpful

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Karla

Four Stars

Reviewed in Canada on August 24, 2017

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Shipping took awhile - but item as described

Reviewed in Canada on November 19, 2014

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This was such an eye opening book for me. Barbara Ehrenreich went undercover to work these minimum-wage paying jobs and documented what she experienced. I could hardly believe some of the things she experienced or witnessed. Truly heartbreaking.

One person found this helpful

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SRC Mom

Should be required reading for all middle and upper income Americans!

Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2023

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It will give you a new perspective every time you go shopping!

Edward J. Szewczyk

Even More Relevant Today

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2023

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A great study of the effect which extreme income and wealth inequality and the resultant syphoning of money toward the top has on the rest of America. This would probably be an eye-opening read for people who believe that your financial lot in life is 100% determined by your personal effort and talents. What if you start from a position of a lack of the money even to open a bank account or scrape together the down payment & damage deposit to rent an apartment? This is Barbara Ehrenreich's greatest book. We all miss her intelligence, insight and empathy for other people.

One person found this helpful

GadgetChick

Fascinating, but ultimately worthless as a social experiment

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2006

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This was the first Barbara Ehrenrich book I read, and it will probably be the last. I am concerned about matters relating to America's working poor and was drawn to the book because I thought it might provide some insight about how people really can live on the income low-wage jobs provide. The last time I worked a job that came close to minimum wage was a number of years ago, and back then I was in college and had campus housing, student loans etc. as a backup. There are many people in the U.S. trying to subsist on low wages, and I thought maybe this book would help me understand what they're going through and what they need to better their situations, so that I can use that information in my own advocacy.

Instead, I found that this book is mainly about Ms. Ehrenrich and her prejudices, insecurities, and snap judgements about people. Other reviewers have said the same things, but my biggest problems with the book were:

- The whining. This woman whines about everything. The work is physically hard. She's tired at the end of the day and her clothes smell bad. She doesn't sleep well because she's petrified of someone breaking into her room and stealing her laptop. She gets a skin rash and it itches, so she calls her "personal dermatologist" (must be nice to have such a thing) and gets help. Waaah, waaah, waaah. I really wished she had spent more time talking about social impacts of working poverty, or the experiences of the people she worked with who were TRULY poor, than whining about her own discomfort.

- The fact that she regularly took "breaks" from her experiment back to her old life, and she continued to access financial and other resources during the experiment. That's not a luxury the real working poor have - to just step away from their life whenever the going gets tough. The fact that she did seriously undermined her experiment.

- The fact that she just doesn't seem interested in working that hard, or doing things that may be unpleasant. I think this, more than anything else, showed Ehrenrich's true colors as a privileged middle-aged woman who has very little capacity to understand the very people she's writing about. She's shocked at how dirty the kitchens where she works are, and how the smells of the restaurant "cling" to her when she gets home. She gets unreasonably angry when patients in a dementia unit throw food at her (hello, the patients have DEMENTIA, they aren't doing it on purpose). Cleaning houses is nasty because you have to deal with cleaning up people's body hair and bodily waste. Her shifts at Wal-Mart and her job cleaning houses make her tired because she's on her feet so much, and she expresses surprise, because after all, she works out and is in good shape! There were many times during the reading of this book that I wanted to roll my eyes at Ehrenrich's privileged cluelessness. Yes, work is not always easy or fun. What a revelation! You get the sense that not only does Ehrenrich want employees to be paid more for their work, but wants the work these people do to be clean, pleasant, involve no bad smells, and be psychologically rewarding at all times also. Sorry, but the world does not work like that. Ehrenrich works as an academic and author and so it's no surprise she's been shielded from the harsh realities of life, but the whining and hand-wringing she did over her 'dirty jobs' was really over the top, if you ask me.

Ultimately I felt the book did a poor job of getting Ehrenrich's point across. What I took away from the book is "poor people have to work nasty, stinky jobs that are awful. Oh, and by the way, they don't get paid enough." As another reviewer mentioned, civilizations are built on the backs of unskilled, low-wage workers, but the U.S. has evolved to the point where we should be able to provide at least a living wage and health care to everyone and bear the costs of those things. But that's not Ehrenrich's issue. She seems indignant about the fact that people have to serve food or clean houses or stock retail shelves AT ALL and seems to believe humans should not be subjected to such indignities. What Ehrenrich would have those people do for money instead, I am not sure, as we can't all teach in private colleges and write books for a living. There will always be services that need to be performed and a need for service workers, and many times the same people working service jobs are the same people CONSUMING services from other service workers, something that Ehrenrich completely ignores - in her world, only overprivileged yuppies or fat white people consume services like restaurant food or discount store clothing. Ehrenrich would have done better if she cut the whining in this book in half and focused more on the economic realities of the poor. As it stands, she just ends up reinforcing the conservative idea of "the liberal in the ivory tower" and does little to advance concerns about the plight of America's working poor.

206 people found this helpful

Jerry Bemrick

A Classic

Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2023

Verified Purchase

This book is a modern day classic. The author didn't just research; she lived it. As relevant today as ever.

Jamie Huynh

A quite enjoyable book with a good lesson.

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2013

Verified Purchase

What can I say about this book? When I started reading it I was as appalled and shocked with the introduction as one might expect, she is going to give up her PH.D high salary lifestyle to go "mingle" with the minimum wage world so she can try to find some secret economy about the poor and than write a book about it? Sounded like a complete waste of time nonetheless demeaning like the poor was s disease that she was going to do research on. However as I got further into the book I knew that my concepts were going to change about her.The longer you stare into the abyss the longer it stares back at you, in chapter 1 of Nickel and Dimed Barbara Ehrenreich author of the book was preparing to set off into an adventure that eventually turns a bit out of hand. Ehrenreich in need of a minimum wage job to start off everything had filled out 22 applicants for jobs and none of them called back leaving the impression that the employers simply put in the advertisement solely as a "filler" to replace the ones that are going to quit or get fired. Having read this first chapter I could tell already this journey of Ehrenreich is going to be a lot more grueling than she signed up for, seeing as how they treat their employees as expendable workers with no skills. Ehrenreich in return had no choice but to accept a job as a waitress, a job that she didn't want to take seeing as how she already was one when she was 18 and did not much enjoy the job, however Ehrenreich soon realizes that the job was more than a job and she soon felt responsible for delivering the food to the customers in need and soon starts to bond with them in her workplace. The accountability for the customers Ehrenreich served soon escalated as she picked up the tab for a customer who spent most of his money on dental surgery wanting them to be happy, Ehrenreich states ""If you seek happiness for yourself you will never find it. Only when you seek happiness for others will it come to you", (20). It's as though this job is starting to grow on her and becoming a part of her very nature and instilling morals in her. After reading the first chapter of this book I am appalled and amazed at this, It reinforces everything of my ideals and philosophy as I believe that working hard and doing manual labor instills great morals and responsibility into a person and trains that person to appreciate things in their life more, not less. Ehrenreich soon finds out that there is no secret economy to the poor and their whole life is horrifying compared to her old one and even now she is well-off than most of her co-workers who are living in trailer parks or in their cars in front of a parking lot. What endows me with adrenaline even more was reading that when Ehrenreich tried to return to her old life to catch up on things, she soon realized she wasn't the same person anymore, the foreshadowing of her life that has been flipped is amazing. How I feel is that these workers are like everyday people and once you get to know them they become a part of you just like everybody else. In the end of all of this Ehrenreich only felt failure, she states "I am in a position to realize, for the first time in many years, that the tear ducts are still there and still capable of doing their job", (48) the thought going through her mind as she quitted both her jobs in a semi-dramatic fashion and soon came into the realization that she was human just as much as anybody else.
- Jamie Huynh Review

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