The New York Times bestselling investigation into white-collar unemployment from "our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism"--The New York Times Book Review

Americans' working lives are growing more precarious every day. Corporations slash employees by the thousands, and the benefits and pensions once guaranteed by "middle-class" jobs are a thing of the past.

In "Bait and Switch," Barbara Ehrenreich goes back undercover to explore another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with the plausible r sum of a professional "in transition," she attempts to land a "middle-class" job. She submits to career coaching, personality testing, and EST-like boot camps, and attends job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and--again and again--rejected.

"Bait and Switch" highlights the people who have done everything right--gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive r sum s--yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster. There are few social supports for these newly disposable workers, Ehrenreich discovers, and little security even for those who have jobs. Worst of all, there is no honest reckoning with the inevitable consequences of the harsh new economy; rather, the jobless are persuaded that they have only themselves to blame.

Alternately hilarious and tragic, "Bait and Switch," like the classic "Nickel and Dimed," is a searing expos of the cruel new reality in which we all now live.

芭芭拉·埃伦里奇是美国著名畅销书作者。她不仅长期为《哈泼斯》（Harper’s）和《国家》杂志（The Nation）撰稿，而且是《纽约时报》和《时代》杂志的知名专栏作家。她已经出版了13本著作，其中包括《纽约时报》畅销书《镍币与银币》（Nickel and Dimed：On (Not) Getting By in America）。芭芭拉以其成熟、真实而犀利的笔锋深受广大读者的痴迷。