Introduction

Summary

The author, journalist and activist Barbara Ehrenreich, states the intent of the book: to work a series of minimum-wage jobs, in order to find out what life is like for America’s lowest-paid citizens. Ehrenreich states that in 1998, when she started her project, “it took, on average, nationwide, an hourly wage of $8.89 to afford a one-bedroom apartment, and the Preamble Center for Public Policy was estimating that the odds against a typical welfare recipient landing a job at such a ‘living wage’ were about 97 to 1.” Ehrenreich set rules for herself. She would not use any of her actual employable skills while looking for jobs. She would take the highest-paid job available and live in the cheapest accommodations available (that provided safety and privacy). However, she would use outside funds, as necessary, to ensure that she always had a car, that she would always know where her next meal was coming from, and that she would not have to worry about ending up homeless. 

Ehrenreich, who was in her late 50s in 1998, acknowledges that she starts with several other advantages. She is white and a native English speaker, does not have children to provide for, and is in good health. After her first location, she “rules out places like New York and L.A.” due to her ethnicity and language. On job applications, she writes that she attended three years of college, despite having a Ph.D. in biology. She also states that she has changed the names of employees, businesses and locations to ensure anonymity of everyone that she met. Ehrenreich closes the introduction with the statement that her experience is the “best-case scenario: a person with every advantage that ethnicity and education, health and motivation can confer.”

Analysis

Ehrenreich opens the book by providing details about her life as a journalist that will be juxtaposed later in the book with her life as a low-wage worker. For example, she writes about eating a $30 lunch with the editor of Harper's magazine while discussing the concept of Nickel and Dimed. Ehrenreich doesn’t particularly want the job of pretending to be a low-wage worker, but she does recognize the importance of the topic. Ehrenreich’s reluctance to go undercover becomes more and more understandable throughout the book, as her reporting reveals that her quality of life as a low-wage worker is much lower than that of her life as a journalist.

In the introduction, Ehrenreich details the rules she set for herself at the outset of her project in order to lend more credibility to the results and dispel the perception of weak spots in her experiment. With a PhD in biology, Ehrenreich is no stranger to the scientific process. By acknowledging that she broke some rules and had advantages that most low-wage workers do not, Ehrenreich anticipates and preemptively responds to some of the criticism she may receive once the book is published. For example, one of Ehrenreich’s rules is that she will not mention her extensive education on her job applications while she is undercover. Ehrenreich points out that most people didn’t notice her education to illustrate the point that undereducated workers aren’t very different from educated workers; the former are just as likely to be intelligent and creative as the latter. Ehrenreich’s explanations serve to answer any potential criticism that her social status and education tainted the experiment’s results, and she also states that her experiences represent those of a privileged low-wage worker, while most actual low-wage workers contend with much more difficult circumstances.