Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehreinrech

Reviewed by Jeffrey Javed (CLA 2009)

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Also available in Drew University Library Popular Literature Collection: 650.1408622 E33b

            After publishing her acclaimed participant observation study on America’s blue-collar working poor, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to explore the world of white-collar unemployment. Caught in the limbo between executive employment and entry-level service jobs, the unemployed white-collar workforce is often forgotten. Though they are skilled, educated, and exist within America’s expansive middle class, these are precisely the people who suffer silently in the harsh job-market. Once again, Ehrenreich changes her identity and goes undercover to experience life as one of the white-collar unemployed.

            Unemployment in the white-collar industry usually lasts an average of five months. As a result, a “transition industry” comprised of career coaches and corporate boot camps has flourished in its attempt to aid workers “in transition.” As Ehrenreich quickly discovers, this industry is unregulated, meaning that the industry is rife with charlatans and pitfalls. Two of the career coaches she works with are both interesting characters. The first employs Wizard of Oz dolls in his sessions and the second is a hyperactive girl who pressures Ehrenreich to lie as much as possible on her resumé. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of her experience with career coaching is the heavy reliance on personality, a trait which seemed to trump any practical skills or education one might have. Aside from the myriad personality tests, Ehrenreich’s coaches tell her that what she needs is networking.

            Networking proves to be an interesting adventure: most of the networking conferences she attends are gatherings of jobless people giving emotional support to their fellow unemployed. Other perks include speakers who inform the unemployed that “attitude” is key to acquiring a job. These conferences amount to placating disgruntled and depressed unemployed white-collar workers. The goal is to have unemployed people structure their job search as a job in and of itself, as if that would give them some feeling of accomplishment and stave off feelings of worthlessness. Another unfortunate aspect of networking Ehrenreich encounters is the proliferation of faith-based networking meetings. Many do not even mention that they are religious in nature, and are not much more helpful than their secular counterparts. The unfortunate aspect of these faith-based conferences, however, is that they proselytize the unemployed and try to convince them that faith in God will secure them their next job. Perhaps it functions as yet another effective method of keeping up the spirits of jobless Americans, but nevertheless it stands as a testament to the extreme hopelessness of the condition of the white-collar unemployed.

            After almost a year of attempting to find a job, Ehrenreich had spent six-thousand dollars on coaches, meetings, books, contacts, etc. to net a total of two white-collar jobs: a commission-based job at AFLAC and another at Mary Kay. Her expenses did not include anything health or family-related, nor did she take on a low-level service job to provide extra income as many unemployed do, because of the time-consuming nature of the job search itself.

            What Ehrenreich concludes from her experience is disheartening. She found that the white-collar unemployed have no feeling of solidarity due to the fragmentation caused by the competition of the job market. Furthermore, the American Dream dissuades nearly everyone from questioning the structure of the economy. Almost no one she meets blames anyone but him- or herself for his or her unemployment. Career coaches and speakers reinforce this self-deprecating attitude by making the struggle for a job search a highly individualized process where blame can only reside with the employee. Issues like corporate downsizing in favor of exploiting cheap international labor markets and an increasingly unstable corporate economy are ignored. Thus the white-collar job search is a veiled attempt to divert the unemployed from the structural inadequacies of the rapidly globalizing American economy.

            Though not as disheartening as Nickel and Dimed because of its middle-class focus, Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch is a compelling book that exposes the hidden despair of the corporate unemployed and the downward mobility of America’s skilled and educated stands as proof of the death of the American Dream; indeed, it is the great American tragedy of our times.