Nickel and Dimed

In Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, Barbara goes out from her normal life of being a writer, and attempts a project of starting over and living as a low-wage worker. She finds herself in times of trouble here and there, and trying to get used to a different lifestyle. Her main priority of doing this whole deal was to know, "How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled?" and " How, in particular, were the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market by welfare reform going to make it on $6 or $7 an hour?" Those were a few of her main goals/wonderings that she took in to consideration when she began. In her attempt into this, Barbara goes to 3 different cities and applies for different jobs as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart associate. In all of this, she also had to find a place to stay, and how it will fit in with her job; and the price she could spend for living, depending on the amount of pay she recieves for her job in possession. As she goes on in her jobs, she meets some incredible people, and gets their intake on the economy and the job market. In the end she thinks that she did pretty well, but their is always room for improvement. She discovered that " no job, no matter how lowly, is truly "unskilled." And that "every one of the jobs that she entered into in the course of this project required concentration, and most demanded that she master new terms, new tools, and new skills." In this whole experience, Barbara learned alot about the world, and also about herself as a person.

Questions for discussion #16
Yes I believe that Ehrenreich's experience would be different in today's economy because alot of things have changed since the time period of 1998-2000. Such as gas prices, gas has shot up out of this world, and is insane. In fact alot of things have gone up in price since then. Just the cost of living now-a-days in the 21st century is very high. The people, and number of jobs available have also changed.