Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in BAIT AND SWITCH, she enters another hidden realm of the economy--the world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible resume of a professional "in transition," attempts to land a "middle class job" undergoing career coaching and personality testing, then begins trawling a series of EST-like "boot camps," job fairs, "networking events," and evangelical job-search "ministries." She gets an "image makeover" to prepare her for the corporate world and works hard to project the "winning attitude" recommended for a successful job search. She is proselytized, scammed, lectured and, again and again, rejected.

BAIT AND SWITCH highlights the people who've done everything right--gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive resumes--yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster and not simply due to the vagaries of the business cycle. Today's ultra-lean corporations take pride in shedding their "surplus" employees--plunging them, for months or years at a stretch, into the twilight zone of white-collar unemployment, where job-searching becomes a full-time job in itself. As Ehrenreich discovers, there are few social supports for the new disposable workers--and little security even for those who have jobs.