Nickel and Dimed Evaluation Summary & Analysis

Evaluation

Summary

Ehrenreich states that she was fairly successful as an employee: she worked hard and was proficient at most tasks. Based on her income over each month at the three locations, she compares her rent and other expenses and finds that she came out even at each. If she were faced with any expensive, unforeseen bills, she would not have been able to pay them (especially with a lack of proper health insurance). “Something is wrong, very wrong,” she states, “when a single person in good health, a person who in addition possesses a working car, can barely support herself by the sweat of her brow.”

Ehrenreich uses several studies to analyze her experiences. While each of the markets that she worked in seemed to have a “labor shortage,” it was most likely a lack of people willing to work for the wages offered. At the time of the writing (around the year 2000), potential employees did not have resources available to compare wages between businesses. On several occasions, Ehrenreich points out how companies that employ the working poor are secretive about wages and other benefits and try to prohibit employees from discussing them.

Ehrenreich also points out the dehumanizing elements that employees must endure. From the manager announcing that employee’s purses can be searched at any time to requiring urine tests in front of a medical professional, Ehrenreich points out that these activities, and how employees are treated by management, all contribute to making employees more subservient. “If you’re made to feel unworthy enough, you may come to think that what you’re paid is what you are actually worth.” Ehrenreich also adds that the attitudes found in managers of low-wage employees are based on class or racial prejudice: “they tend to fear and distrust the category of people from which they recruit their workers.”

Ehrenreich notes that part of the problem is that medical benefits and reliable child care are too expensive, even for middle-class families. She also mentions that most “civilized nations compensate for the inadequacy of wages by providing relatively generous public services such as health insurance, free or subsidized child care, subsidized housing, and effective public transportation.” She also references articles that describe how affluent people are increasingly less likely to interact with poor people. She also cites articles that relate that while unemployment and poverty numbers might be decreasing, hunger is an increasing problem in America. Ehrenreich closes with a prediction that someday, the working poor will demand proper wages, through strikes and disruption, and America will be better for it.

Analysis

In the final section of Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich revisits the issue of the working poor’s mental health. She points out that our society teaches low-wage workers to feel subservient to the companies that employ them. Drug tests, threats of bag searches, petty rules, and invasive personality tests can damage workers’ morale and harm their sense of self. In addition, workers are often reminded of their low position in the social hierarchy and how easily they can be replaced. Over time, these microaggressions lower workers’ self-esteem and make them less likely to demand better treatment, all of which benefits their employers. Just as Ehrenreich has illustrated previously in the book, low-wage workers are not viewed as valuable individuals but as commodities or liabilities. Businesses prioritize profits over the mental health of their employees, and Ehrenreich repeatedly calls attention to this serious societal issue.

In her conclusion, Ehrenreich highlights some of the unfair systems that seem to have been set up to penalize low-wage workers. To explain why the working poor tend to be less healthy, Ehrenreich points out that the jobs she performed as a low-wage worker were physically demanding to the point of causing injuries. Ehrenreich relays the money she made and spent in each job to prove that for low-wage earners, there generally aren't funds left over to pay for the medical help that low-wage earners require for the ailments caused by their jobs. That inequity, in addition to the broken housing system that plagues low-wage workers, leads Ehrenreich to conclude that the economy is structured so that rich people get richer on the backs of low-wage workers, who continue to toil while seeing no tangible change in their circumstances. These unsustainable systems force low-wage workers into financial holes they can never escape.

Ehrenreich suggests that the social hierarchy problems she observed in low-wage jobs aren’t just a matter for employers to address, but a bigger societal issue she calls a "culture of extreme inequality." One of the most problematic aspects of this “culture” is the disparity in visibility between rich and poor people. Businesses go out of their way to hide low-wage workers from their customers, and low-wage workers are often treated as if they are invisible. Meanwhile, wealthy people are highly visible in society and therefore more likely to be heard when they complain about unfair treatment. In her final point about the culture of inequality, Ehrenreich reframes low-wage workers as the "major philanthropists of our society" because they give so much to the economy and receive so little in return. Ehrenreich also strongly suggests that our society should actively invest in repairing the broken systems that make it impossible for poor people to escape their circumstances.

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