Low Wage Worker

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Most Americans believe all those who are poor and homeless are those without a job, only surviving on a little amount received through governmental aid. We learn this to be untrue through an essay from Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel-and-Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. In this essay Barbara will first handily experience the life of the increasing low-wage American job holder. These low-wage jobs hourly pay from the $5.15 mandatory minimum to the mere but reputable $10 wage. At this salary one may not seem noticeably poor, however factor in the needed expenses of housing, food, childcare, and transportation, one may dwindle into poverty. With an increasing amount of low wage workers from such communities as those of welfare recipients, the employment opportunity is becoming scarce forcing one to migrate in order to accomplish the best salary, leaving a more stressful lifestyle with many more hardships to endure.

Acting as inexperienced as she can, Barbara must search for a job that would qualify as low wage work, also accommodating her living expenses. She struggles finding what she wants because of the many false hiring ads companies place in order to reassure positions always have applicants, not knowing when an employee will move to a better paying job. After many interviews she is forced to a waitress job at an attached hotel restaurant named the Hearthside, where her so called new life begins. She carries this job for two weeks and the best thing to come from it was a middle aged woman by the name of Gail. After the suicide of her jailed boyfriend, Gail becomes the ideal, long term, low wage worker, struggling with a place to live. She learns many things from Gail's kindness and hospitality. "Put on all you want." "She...

... middle of paper ...

...themselves, or pursuing a specific career, and lack any notable job experience.

In conclusion, Barbara Ehrenreich's studies successfully informs the reader of many things the unfortunate endure, I myself never knew. The thought of grown adults making the same sometimes less than a person of my age shocks me. Before reading this essay I had a set definition of the homeless or the poverty stricken Americans, which was one that called home a cardboard box in some New York City alley bumming money off the working force for booze or crack. In addition, those who didn't make enough money could always just find a better job that pays more, thus declaring them not poor anymore, right? Finally, I find this essay very informative of the struggles finding and maintaining a job without education nor prior experience, in order to live in the vast growing low-wage America.

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