The bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed goes back undercover to accomplish for America’s ailing middle income what she did for the working poor.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Today, in BAIT AND SWITCH, she enters another concealed realm of the economy-the globe of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible resume of a specialist ‘in changeover,’ efforts to land a ‘middle course job’ undergoing career coaching and character testing, then begins about Bait and Change: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Fantasy trawling a series of EST-like ‘shoe camps,’ work fairs, ‘marketing events,’ and evangelical job-search ‘ministries.’ She gets an ‘image makeover’ to prepare her for the organization world and works really difficult to project the ‘winning attitude’ suggested for a successful job search. She is proselytized, scammed, lectured and, again and again, rejected.

BAIT AND Change highlights individuals who’ve done everything right-gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive resumes-yet have grown to be repeatedly vulnerable to financial devastation and not simply because of the vagaries of the business enterprise cycle. Today’s ultra-lean corporations take pride in shedding their ‘surplus’ employees-plunging them, for weeks or years at a time, in to the twilight area of white-collar unemployment, where job-searching turns into a full-time job in itself. As Ehrenreich discovers, there are few social supports for the brand new disposable workers-and little protection even for those who have jobs.

Like the now classic Nickel and Dimed, BAIT AND SWITCH is alternately hilarious and tragic, a searing expose of economic cruelty where we least expect it.