Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market (Russell Sage Foundation Books at Harvard University Press) (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Katherine Newman is not afraid to ask the hard questions in her new book, Chutes and Ladders. There is much to draw from the "high flyers" such as Kyesha, Jamal and Kevin, who work their way out of poverty, and the rest of the people Newman follows in these pages offer all of us important lessons and insights. In Chutes and Ladders, policymakers have a blueprint for valuing work and reducing poverty.
--Senator John Edwards (20070901)

This engaging book chronicles the divergent trajectories of a group of low-wage workers during a brief period of economic prosperity. Katherine Newman has once again demonstrated the value of careful ethnographic research in revealing the many challenges confronting the working poor. Chutes and Ladders is a unique and important study that should be widely read and discussed.
--William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

Chutes and Ladders makes an important contribution to our knowledge of low-wage workers. There are many studies of the plight of young, low-income workers, but few if any follow them closely to see what happens to them over time. The conventional wisdom says that they are stuck in undesirable jobs forever, but Katherine Newman shows that about 20 per cent move up the job ladder and greatly improve their lives. Because of her detailed knowledge of these workers' life stores, Newman shows us how they do it.
--Andrew Cherlin, Johns Hopkins University

Drawing on an eight-year study, Newman effectively uses ethnographic portraits to examine why some low-wage earners in New York's ghettos and beyond--particularly African American and Latino service-sector employees--have been experiencing a real-life version of the game. Some were able to capitalize on the economic prosperity of the late 1990s, often thanks to family, friends, and public subsidies; they went up the ladder, returning to school and obtaining trade certificates, high school diplomas, and even college degrees. Meanwhile, others, faced with family obligations, little or no training, and sheer prejudice, were not able to take advantage of these opportunities and moved downward. (starred review)
--Ellen D. Gilbert (Library Journal )

Newman is a patient and sympathetic reporter, and she asked her subjects deep questions about their work histories, their love lives, their politics and their dreams. A lot of what she heard from them will come as a surprise to anyone who has read much recent scholarship on the inner-city poor...Newman is not blind to the many disadvantages these former burger-flippers face in the marketplace, from outright racism to a lack of the casual social connections that middle-class Americans often use to find and land a job. The system really is sometimes rigged against these workers, and they know it. But despite all this, they speak persuasively and passionately about the way work, even rotten work, gives meaning to their lives. Stories like Adam's and Ebony's only confirm to them what they already believe: that anyone can succeed if they work hard enough.
--Paul Tough (New York Times Book Review )

Newman‘s important contribution to the literature on the impact of the low-wage job market and the dismantling of the welfare system follows a group of workers from the fast food industry in Harlem over a ten year span of time. Her ethnographic approach reveals the barriers faced by this group of workers and the different pathways utilized to attain upward mobility in the labor and wage structure. Newman...compares this sample and conclusions with a national representative sample from the Survey of Income and Program Participation during the same time period. The data analysis indicates that workers from poor and near-poor households experienced substantial upward mobility. This finding is confirmed for households that found employment in what are considered dead-end jobs. The increase in household income does not lift them from poverty, but the ethnographic analysis indicates the changes in households that occurred during this period. The combination of qualitative and quantitative data opens a discussion of mechanisms for policymakers to deal with the issue of work and the poverty population.
--D.S. Pierson (Choice )

Product Description

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.

(20061022)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (October 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674023366
• ISBN-13: 978-0674023369
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #407,082 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Climbing a Greasy Ladder to Success, January 26, 2007

By	takingadayoff "takingadayoff" (Las Vegas, Nevada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Maybe you've read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel-and-Dimed or David K. Shipler's The Working Poor. Or perhaps you've seen the episode of Morgan Spurlock's TV series 30 Days in which he and his girlfriend try to make it on minimum wage jobs for one month. Then you know that it is just not possible to live on minimum wage. Is welfare the only alternative? Is there any reason at all to work at mind-numbing, soul-sucking, back-breaking minimum wage McJobs? Katherine Newman takes a look at that question from the viewpoint, not of a journalist, but of an anthropologist. She and her grad student team interviewed about three hundred applicants at Harlem fast food restaurants in 1996 and then followed their progress for two years. The applicants were from Harlem, all from poor families and mostly Latino or African-American. They ranged in age from teenagers to mid-thirties. Newman documented the two-year project in her previous book No Shame in My Game.

She and her team went back eight years later to see what had happened to the "subjects." They were only able to find about forty of the original applicants, so while it doesn't constitute a large enough sample to draw statistical conclusions from, they thought it still might be useful to see what paths the most successful workers had followed. Chutes & Ladders is the story of what they found after eight years. As anthropologists, they had no preconceived ideas or expectations. The reader however, might have a few ideas of what to expect, and might end up being surprised. I was.

Some of the workers didn't do too well over the years, and ended up on welfare, disillusioned and angry. But some of the workers were more successful than anyone would have predicted, working in white-collar jobs that paid well above poverty level, over $100,000 in one case. In fact, about 20% of the original fast food applicants were no longer poor after eight years. How did they do it? Did they have certain advantages over the others? Did they get a lucky break along the way? Does working at a McJob really prepare you for bigger and better jobs? There are no simple answers.

Newman presents all the data, in charts and statistics, and in a narrative that is just as readable and compelling as Ehrenreich's and Shipler's. You will have to draw your own conclusions. It seemed to me that the most successful workers did not gain any advantage from working at fast food restaurants or other minimum wage jobs. They just got the best job they could at the time and moved to better work when they found it. But they didn't wait around for better jobs to magically appear. They kept their ears open and paid attention to who was hiring and what sort of applicants were required. They adjusted themselves to the best of their ability to look and sound like what the employers wanted. They worked hard and learned fast, but they weren't necessarily the smartest or the most advantaged (or even the least disadvantaged). They seemed to be the ones with an idea of where they wanted to go. They wanted to succeed and they figured out, in different ways, how to get there.

There are bound to be some people who look at a study like this and conclude that since some people can pull themselves out of poverty, then everyone should be able to. Even some of the workers in the study came to this conclusion. "If I can do it, then anyone should be able to." But remember, it was only about 20% of these young and healthy workers who were able to succeed. That leaves 80% who were still working minimum wage jobs, not working at all, or who were working off the grid. It really is hard to make it on minimum wage, and adding complications such as child care and/or unexpected bills (usually health-related) can derail the best of plans.

Still, it's hard not to find the results of this study more positive than negative. If 20% were able to succeed with no help at all, then imagine how many could succeed with some help. Health insurance for everyone would be a great start.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great if you're interested in questions about poverty, May 16, 2007

By	Paula L. Craig (Falls Church, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Chutes and Ladders" is a fascinating longitudinal study of low-wage workers in the U.S. labor market. I would like to see it become better known, especially among poor people and those who work with them. The main message of Newman's book is that it's not easy to climb out of poverty, but a surprising number of people do manage it.

I felt that Newman shied away from some of the easiest conclusions to draw from her own work. She notes frequently that problems with kids are a major reason why many people fail to escape poverty. Child care is at best expensive and at worst unavailable. Kids get sick and have to be taken care of, often leading to job loss among the poor. Yet Newman says almost nothing about the use of birth control and/or abortion to prevent poverty or increase the chance of a family escaping it. As far as I'm concerned, kids are a luxury item. My husband and I have a son, age ten. Although we both have good jobs, we have found even one child to be incredibly expensive in both money and time. I can't imagine how we could manage with two. Yet many subjects of Newman's study, already poor, go on to have two or five or even seven kids! No wonder so many of them stayed poor!

Newman mentions recent economic growth as one of the factors benefitting the poor in the U.S. This is misleading. Economic growth is generally measured by GDP, which is a measure so inaccurate so as to be almost laughable. GDP is not corrected for increasing population, pollution, exhaustion of natural resources, or declining quality of life. More accurate measures of economic growth, such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare or Genuine Progress Indicator, tend to show that there has been almost no genuine economic growth in the U.S. since the 1970s. For more on this, see McKibben's book "Deep Economy," Daly's "Beyond Growth," or Brian Czech's "Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train."

I also thought that Newman overlooked important questions on why it is that the quality of life for poor people in the U.S. is so low. After all, the average wage of a burger-flipping worker in the U.S. would put a family well into the middle class in most countries. Why is the cost of living so high here when the prices of most basic commodities do not differ all that much between countries? This is a complex question, but some surprising answers have already been found, which Newman would do well to consider. For example, one of the main reasons it costs so much to live in the U.S. is that our transportation system is organized around the automobile. Cars not only cost money for those who own them, they require high taxes to pay for all those highways. Everybody pays these taxes, including those who don't own a car. Cars also increase housing costs, because parking has to be provided for all those cars, which spreads out cities. For more on this, see Donald Shoup's book "The High Cost of Free Parking."

Overall, though, Newman's book is interesting and well worth reading.