'Bait and Switch' by Barbara Ehrenreich

Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes

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BAIT AND SWITCH The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

By Barbara Ehrenreich 237 pages. $24.

Metropolitan Books /Henry Holt & Co. Reviewed by Janet Maslin

Nobody reads Barbara Ehrenreich without developing a heightened sense of how American business operates. So readers of her new book, "Bait and Switch," will notice how closely its publisher has made it conform to her last one, the best seller "Nickel and Dimed." Their titles have the same ring. Ehrenreich uses the same basic investigative reporting methods. Perhaps inflation or an extra 16 pages accounts for a $1 rise in price

Each of these books has a parenthetical word in its subtitle. "On (Not) Getting By in America" was how "Nickel and Dimed" described Ehrenreich's experience of physically draining minimum-wage work. The new book's subtitle "The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream" takes her a few rungs up the economic ladder to the world of white-collar unemployment.

And each book's cover shows a model recapitulating the author's undercover work. There's a picture of a waitress on "Nickel and Dimed." "Bait and Switch" shows what looks like a job interview, with a demure, blond, relatively young woman in an office, staring apprehensively at the man who could hire her. It's an image that suits the book's title even better than might have been intended. The model looks timid. The actual Ehrenreich is nobody's cream puff.

But she is once again a smart, mordant observer of the world that her book describes. "In networking, as in prostitution, there is no time for fascination" is one of her observations here. "Nickel and Dimed" was similarly gimlet-eyed, but its targets were more tangible, given the indignation of a struggling underclass. This time, the very elusiveness of any certainty even as to what actually constitutes having a job anymore makes it harder for her to take aim.

Once again Ehrenreich sets herself specific guidelines for her adventure. She plans to give it 10 months and $5,000 in expenses: skimpy resources, since her book will make it clear that job- hunting can be much more time-consuming and costly than that. She decides to avoid revealing her age (to readers as well as to prospective employers), to claim expertise in public relations and speechwriting (a popular writer is well versed in these things anyway) and to balk at nothing but job opportunities in Baghdad. "And of course I am admirably flexible," she writes, "applying at one point for a job as PR director of the American Diabetes Association and then switching sides and offering myself to Hershey's."

Ehrenreich's last book led her into grueling situations; this one gives her galling ones. Soon she has invaded the list-, jargon- and metaphor-loving "transition industry" for job seekers, in which well- paid counselors dole out useless advice. Ehrenreich does not brook condescension or idiocy well. And she has entered a realm where both are unavoidable. She also pays to have her talents evaluated. She is told she'd make a lousy writer.

"I think of my father, whose personality traits included brash, cynical, bombastic, obnoxious, charming, kindly and falling-down drunk, yet who managed to rise from the copper mines of Butte to the corporate stratosphere, ending up as vice president of research for a multinational firm," she writes. "Did he ever take a personality test or submit to executive coaching?"

The world of the white-collar unemployed proves more passive, guilt-ridden and depressing than she expected. It also turns out to be more frustrating: Nowadays, an online job application can be acknowledged solely by an automatic corporate e-mail message.

At job fairs, would-be applicants are interviewed standing up (to waste less of potential employers' time) and advised to bathe before arriving and hide any tattoos. And landing a job that involves no office, responsibilities or health insurance, or working on commission by promoting peculiar products ("I briefly try to envision a social life in which the subject of cleaning fluids would naturally arise on a regular basis"), means Pyrrhic victory at best.

It doesn't much matter that Ehrenreich never wormed her way into working for, say, the trade association for the modular home construction industry. "Bait and Switch" is about a process rather than an end result, and it captures that process all too clearly. As usual, Ehrenreich makes great, acerbic company for the reader. But this book cannot match "Nickel and Dimed" for cathartic indignation.

Yes, the people she meets are being suckered by books with titles like "The Ultimate Secret to Getting Absolutely Everything You Want." Yes, that ought to make them angrier. Yes, they are being exploited by hucksters and treated as blame-worthy victims. But this book can only mirror their powerlessness. And its best details provide only fleeting relief from the gloom. When searching for work on the Internet, Ehrenreich warns, watch out for "job" as a keyword for a Google search. Not unless, instead of books promising total success in an instant, you're looking for a more explicit kind of pornography.