Nickel and Dimed
In *Nickel and Dimed*, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich leaves her middle-class life behind to go undercover as a low-wage worker, taking jobs as a waitress, house cleaner, and Walmart associate across three U.S. cities. Earning just $7 to $8 an hour, she quickly discovers that even full-time, backbreaking labor isn’t enough to cover basic needs like rent, food, and healthcare. She navigates predatory housing markets where a month’s rent eats up most of her paycheck, endures demeaning management tactics, and witnesses how coworkers rely on food banks, skip medical care, and work multiple jobs just to survive. Ehrenreich’s eye-opening experiment dismantles the myth that hard work alone lifts people out of poverty, exposing a broken economic system where millions of working Americans are trapped in cycles of insecurity and exploitation. Her raw, firsthand account forces readers to confront the hidden crisis of working poverty in the U.S.
