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Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market
Harvard University Press
November 2006
On Sale: October 30, 2006
432 pages
ISBN: 0674023366
EAN: 9780674023369
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Now that the welfare system has been largely dismantled,
the fate of America's poor depends on what happens to them
in the low-wage labor market. In this timely volume,
Katherine S. Newman explores whether the poorest workers and
families benefited from the tight labor markets and good
economic times of the late 1990s. Following black and Latino
workers in Harlem, who began their work lives flipping
burgers, she finds more good news than we might have
expected coming out of a high-poverty neighborhood. Many
adult workers returned to school and obtained trade
certificates, high school diplomas, and college degrees.
Their persistence paid off in the form of better jobs,
higher pay, and greater self-respect. Others found union
jobs and, as a result, brought home bigger paychecks, health
insurance, and a pension. More than 20 percent of those
profiled in Chutes and Ladders are no longer poor. A very different story emerges among those who floundered
even in a good economy. Weighed down by family obligations
or troubled partners and hindered by poor training and
prejudice, these "low riders" moved in and out of the labor
market, on and off public assistance, and continued to
depend upon the kindness of family and friends. Supplementing finely drawn ethnographic portraits, Newman
examines the national picture to show that patterns around
the country paralleled the findings from some of New York's
most depressed neighborhoods. More than a story of the
shifting fortunes of the labor market, Chutes and Ladders
asks probing questions about the motivations of low-wage
workers, the dreams they have for the future, and their
understanding of the rules of the game.
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