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Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Book by Barbara Ehrenreich · 3 quotes · Work, Business, Jobs

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Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream Quotes

“The career coaching industry can only expand. Whether or not the economy improves. And this is because the corporate world has changed. Today, in the wake of the last recession, companies are intent on being permanently lean; they churn people in and out as needed, so that the average executive or professional can expect to hold—what?—about ten or eleven jobs in a lifetime whether he or she wants to or not. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that our society is so unprepared for this change. College, for example, prepares people for jobs, but not for the trauma of job change.”

“Capitalism, as Marx observed—with surprising admiration for its dynamism—never promised stability, and it’s been a generation since blue-chip companies like IBM offered their white-collar workers a job for life. As the best-seller Who Moved My Cheese advises, dislocated professionals must learn to adapt to new flavors of cheese as the old ones are taken away. But when skilled and experienced people routinely find their skills unwanted and their experience discounted, then something has happened that cuts deep into the very social contract that holds us together.”