Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

by Barbara Ehrenreich

To put the wage gains of the past four years in somewhat dismal perspective: they have not been sufficient to bring low-wage workers up to the amounts they were earning twenty-seven years ago, in 1973.

Furthermore, of all workers, the poorest have made the least progress back to their 1973 wage levels.

he observed that productivity—to which wages are theoretically tied—has been rising at such a healthy clip that “workers should be getting much more.”

he could double his business overnight if only he could find enough reliable workers. As politely as possible, I asked him why he didn’t just raise the pay. The question seemed to slide right off him. We offer “mothers’

hours,” he told

“With a benefit like that, how could anybody compl...

many employers will offer almost anything—free meals, subsidized transportation, store discounts—rather than raise wages. The reason for this, in the words of one employer, is that such extras “can be shed more easily” than wage increases when changes in the market seem to make them unnecessary.

the advantage of the rebate is that it seems like a gift and can be withdrawn without explanation.

In evading and warding off wage increases, employers are of course behaving in an economically rational fashion; their business isn’t to make their employees more comfortable and secure but to maximize the bottom line.

The assumption behind the law of supply and demand, as it applies to labor, is that workers will sort themselves out as effectively as marbles on an inclined plane—gravitating to the better-paying jobs and either leaving the recalcitrant employers behind or forcing them

Part of the answer is that actual humans experience a little more “friction” than marbles

the poorer they are, the more constrained their mobility usually

For the laws of economics to work, the “players” need to be well informed about their options.

assistance, affluent job hunters expect to study the salary-benefit packages offered by their potential employers, watch the financial news to find out if these packages are in line with those being offered in other regions or fields, and probably do a little bargaining before taking a job.

But there are no Palm Pilots, cable channels, or Web sites to advise the low-wage job seeker.

So information about who earns what and where has to travel by word of mouth, and for inexplicable cultural reasons, this is a very slow and unreliable route.

Kristine Jacobs pinpoints what she calls the “money taboo” as a major factor preventing workers from optimizing their earnings. “There’s a code of silence surrounding issues related to individuals’ earnings,” she told me. “We confess everything

else in our society—sex, crime, illness. But no one wants to reveal what they ...

The New York Times recently reported on several lawsuits brought by employees who had allegedly been fired for breaking this rule—a woman, for example, who asked for higher pay after learning from her male coworkers that she was being paid considerably less than they were for the very same work.

why don’t more of them take a stand where they are—demanding better wages and work conditions, either individually or as a group?

One of these was the co-optative power of management, illustrated by such euphemisms as associate and team member.

There was the profit-sharing plan, with Wal-Mart’s stock price posted daily in a prominent spot near the break room. There was the company’s much-heralded patriotism, evidenced in the banners over the shopping floor urging workers and customers to contribute to the construction of a World War II veterans’ memorial

There were “associate” meetings that served as pep rallies,

What surprised and offended me most about the low-wage workplace

the extent to which one is required to surrender one’s basic civil rights and—what boils down to the same thing—self-respect.

It is unsettling, at the very least, to give a stranger access to things, like your self-doubts and your urine, that are otherwise shared only in medical or therapeutic situations.

Rules against “gossip,” or even “talking,” make it hard to air your grievances to peers or—

Those who do step out of line often face little unexplained punishments, such as having their schedules or their work assignments unilaterally changed. Or you may be fired;

Wal-Mart employees who have bucked the company—by getting involved in a unionization drive or by suing the company for failing to pay overtime—have been fired for breaking the company rule against using profanity.

So if low-wage workers do not always behave in an economically rational way, that is, as free agents within a capitalist democracy, it is because they dwell in a place that is neither free nor in any way democratic.

that are forced into a subordinate status within their social systems adapt their brain chemistry accordingly, becoming “depressed” in humanlike ways.

My guess is that the indignities imposed on so many low-wage workers—the drug tests, the constant surveillance, being “reamed out” by managers—are part of

what keeps wages low. If you’re made to feel unworthy enough, you may come to think that what you’re paid is what you are actually worth.

But these things cost money—$20,000 or more a year for a manager, $100 a pop for a drug test, and so on—and the high cost of repression results in ever more pressure to hold wages down.

“living wage” and came up with an average figure of $30,000 a year for a family of one adult and two children, which amounts to a wage of $14 an hour.

The shocking thing is that the majority of American workers, about 60 percent, earn less than $14 an hour.

Many of them get by by teaming up with another wage earner, a spouse or grown child.

Some draw on government help in the form of food stamps, housing vouchers, the e...

subsidized chi...

single mothers for...

have nothing but their own wages to live on, no matter how many mout...

ahead. Indeed, it is probably impossible for the private sector to provide everyone with an adequate standard of living through wages, or even wages plus benefits, alone:

too much of what we need, such as reliable child care, is just too expensive, even for middle-class families.

the inadequacy of wages by providing relatively generous public services such as health insurance, free or subsidized child care, subsidized housing, and effective public tr...

These experiences are not part of a sustainable lifestyle, even a lifestyle of chronic deprivation and relentless low-level punishment. They are, by almost any standard of subsistence, emergency situations.

To go from the bottom 20 percent to the top 20 percent is to enter a magical world where needs are met, problems are solved, almost without any intermediate effort.

top 20 percent

what I have termed in an earlier book the “professional-managerial class,” is the home of our decision makers, opinion shapers, culture creators—our professors, lawyers, executives, entertainers, politicians, judges, writers, producers, and editors.13 When they speak, they are listened to.

Political power, too, is concentrated within the top 20 percent,

According to a recent poll conducted by Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based employment research firm, 94 percent of Americans agree that “people who work full-time should be able to earn enough to keep their families out of poverty.”