The Social Experiment in Nickel and Dimed, a Book by Barbara Ehrenreich

The book Nickel and Dimed was created by a journalist who wanted to make her own news. Barbara Ehrenreich, a social change writer with a Ph.D. in Biology, did this by putting herself in shoes many people don’t want to be in. In her book, Ehrenreich reflects in her social experiment of stripping away her comfortable life style and survive as a low-wage working class citizen. She would work various low-wage jobs and live off those paychecks. Her paychecks would pay for her lease or her hotel rooms, food, gas and anything else that came up.

With this experiment Ehrenreich strived to make connections with the people she worked with too. She wanted to know what others living conditions were, their struggle and stories. It was interesting to see that another part of the experiment was somewhat personal to Ehrenreich. We observed how higher class would handle the struggles of the people of the working class.

Ehrenreich’s reason for these experiment is to find out whether, “A single mother leaving welfare could survive without government assistance”.

Though Ehrenreich didn’t have kids on her trips, the comparison between her experience and having to take care of more than one person, was moving enough. Also Ehrenreich speaks about the important people in her life that has always been in the working class. Ehrenreich’s other purpose, was to see what their lives are like and possibly how to connect with them more. Ehrenreich isn’t doing this research to review jobs.

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She is doing it to see the physical and mental toll it has on her, and if she can even survive by having these jobs.

Throughout the book I never worried about Ehrenreich finding her jobs. There are plenty of jobs out there and are usually easy to land. Plus she was an older white lady who had a good work ethic. I was interested in seeing what her résumé looked like for this experiment and how that played into her finding these jobs. Keeping the jobs is what is hard in America. Low-wage work is stressful. These companies are trying to get the most work out of people for less money.

And they know they can easily replace you if you can’t or won’t do what needs to be done. When Ehrenreich returned for her second day at “Jerry’s” her co-workers greeted her with “Hardly anyone comes back after the second day.” (Ehrenreich, 31) Low-wage work can be long, tiring, messy, stressful, and unforgiving. There is no sympathy with a lot of these companies and employees lack passion for their work.

Women, specifically single mothers, coming out of welfare struggle with keeping these jobs. The amount of mental and physical stress that comes from these jobs aren’t something they are us to and many won’t put up with it. When children are a factor, mothers have to worry about way more that their jobs. They have to put the needs of their children before their own. These long hours in the day often leaves their children in the care of others and the amount of fatigue after a shift often leaves a mother detached from her home life. These jobs aren’t practical for people who have been getting assistance from the government, which is why welfare goes up instead of unemployment going down.

Ehrenreich found her jobs without a lot struggle. A women coming out of welfare would have a more difficult time finding as many jobs, and they would still be very low-wage. Because of these low paying jobs and being on welfare, achieving social mobility is near impossible for these women. The social mobility cannot happen in the jobs that people get straight out of welfare. Mobility would come from someone who climbed from the bottom to somewhere slightly higher. It would take years and years of dedicated work to get promoted and even then most companies won’t even consider it. Ehrenreich talks about this saying that, “If you work harder you will get ahead.’ No one ever said that you could work harder- and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.” (Ehrenreich, 220).

Ehrenreich’s research had its strengths and weaknesses. Her work was well organized and outlined. She prepared to the best of her abilities to live truthfully in this world. She did this by presenting herself as, “A divorced homemaker reentering the workforce after many years.’ (Ehrenreich, 5). She made her résumé appropriate for the jobs she wanted to get and didn’t bring much attention to her education. She documented all of her finances and supplied statistics correlated to them to give her readers a wider view of poverty in American.

She also did an amazing job of connecting with a lot of her coworkers. This connection gave the readers a better understanding of people live a poor working class life style. Her descriptions of these people and their responses to some of her questions were simple but moving. At one point one of her coworkers, Holly, had a severely injured ankle. Instead of asking off she cries and talks about how, “She’s already missed so many days in the last few weeks.” (Ehrenreich, 110). These stories were the most impactful, more than Ehrenreich’s personal struggle with her new living conditions. These people can afford to go to the emergency room or even a day off, so Holly continued to work.

Ehrenreich’s research had many faults though. She set rules for herself before she began her journey, to not fall back on her education and her real job, to take the highest-paying job she gets and keep it, and take the cheapest place to stay (Ehrenreich, 5-6). But she admits to breaking a lot of these rules. To me she wasn’t full invested in actually experiencing the poor working class life.

She half did this experiment and relied on her own privilege to survive the life people actively live every day. If you are going to do this experiment it is not going to be as impactful if you still have a car, when your hungry you use your bank card and sleep in a hotel room when you can’t pay rent. It certainly didn’t reflect the lives of a single mother coming off of welfare. I also had a problem with the places she decided to go find work in. Places like Key West, Maine, and Minnesota where a friend lived.

These were places that jobs weren’t scarce, the people weren’t in deep poverty and where she would feel comfortable trying to survive in. To me, she never stepped out of her comfort zone. She reminded me of a suburban house wife who ventured a little too downtown and decided to study it. Going into the Maine chapter she opens with, “I chose Maine for its whiteness.” (Ehrenreich, 51). Though she justifies her reason for going there, seeing her go to places with a lack of diversity weakens her argument. I feel as though she was scared to go out and find even poorer working class areas and invest all of her life into this research.

If Barbara Ehrenreich decided to start this experiment today, I feel like she wouldn’t get too far. Jobs today are becoming less and less and companies are looking for certain people. The jobs she would have gotten would be so time consuming that I doubt she would have been able to juggle more than two at a time. That is if she could land even one. Two part time low-wage jobs, wouldn’t be enough to afford a place to sleep at night and food. The cost of living continues to increase as minimum wage increases. Poor working class citizens today are in a constant state of struggle, especially single mothers and that is why we have so many on welfare.