Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market

by Katherine S. Newman

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Sociology, American

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Katherine Newman is Professor of Sociology and James Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. Author of several books on middle class economic instability, urban poverty, and the sociology of inequality, she previously taught at the University of California (Berkeley), Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton.

Reviews

[Kressel Housman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a follow-up to No Shame in My Game, which was a sociological study of employees of “Burger Barn,” a fast food chain in Harlem. This book revisits that group of people five years later and describes their career paths, dividing them into three groups: high flyers, who landed middle class jobs; up but not out, people who have better jobs but who are still classified as poor; and low riders, people still at low wage jobs, or worse, who are unemployed.

As I learned in Gang Leader for a Day, there are two basic approaches to sociology. There’s the data-driven approach, which interprets census results, wage information, and the like, and there’s the ethnographic method, in which researchers embed themselves with the individuals they are studying and describe their lives in detail. This book combines both methods, and luckily, there is more ethnography than data. The stories of the people were absorbing; the data analysis was so dull, I could barely concentrate. I didn’t even bother with the appendices at the end.

The most inspirational parts of the book, unsurprisingly, came from the high flyers and their success stories. You can’t help but admire these people. But the research for the book took place in the early 2000’s, before the recession. The book argues that even the low riders benefitted from the economic boom years, but it left me wondering what happened to all these people when the bubble burst. One high flyer trajectory was to leave New York for a job in the car industry in Lansing, Michigan. That might have been a move upward in 2000, but what happened in 2008? I don’t think Katherine Newman has done a more recent follow-up study.

But even though the book is dated and dry in spots, it’s still worth reading. Newman doesn’t shy away from any of the hot button issues: racial discrimination, welfare v. workfare, and whether or not a college degree is worthwhile. Most of all, it’s a testament to the work ethic of a group of Americans often believed to lack it: the inner city poor.

[Stephany Wilkes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well designed, executed, and written story of a decade-long longitudinal study on low-wage workers and the surprising, inspiring ascents of some of them. I liked Newman's writing style: thorough and clear without being dry or politically correct and apologetic, humane and colorful without a bleeding-heart feel to it. The author is honest, admitting when she observed an outcome she didn't necessarily expect.

I wish I'd found this before I wrote my dissertation. If you or anyone you know will be designing, conducting, and writing up qualitative research, this book is a must read no matter your subject area. Pay attention to the Appendix and Chapter 5, in which a larger, more robust set of quantitative data is examined and compared to the qualitative results from the author's smaller sample.

Newman helpfully illustrates overarching findings with quotations from study subjects, which make this research-based story richer and "humanizes" the data. Hearing these workers in their own words help to convincingly disrupt common stereotypes about low-wage workers and black Americans in particular. A few such stereotypes I remember from my own upbringing in Detroit are: "They like being on welfare, they don't want to work" and "Don't they know they shouldn't have children?" and "They don't even want an education." Even if you, like me, already know that such beliefs are not based in fact, the life stories and survey data presented here will convince you of this at a deeper, more substantiated level.

I was surprised about the strength of the connection between union-wage jobs and workers staying off of public assistance, as well as the importance of kin networks to making survival possible.

If you are or have been a low-wage worker yourself, be prepared for an especially emotional read. I had "a moment" when I realized that, during the period of this study, I qualified as a low-wage worker and fit almost perfectly (save for being white and in Detroit instead of Harlem) into the study sample. I spent a lot of time thinking back to the frustration of a time when I had three jobs but made $16,000/year and thus "too much" to qualify for most kinds of aid, as well as a full time undergraduate course load I needed loans (that I'm still paying for!) to afford. Even though the study was qualitative, my experience had me thinking "I can anecdotally attest to the veracity of that result."

If you truly care about this topic, you'll find this a refreshing, fact-filled account instead of the usual political and media hyperbole.

[Chris Aylott · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1993, Katherine Newman studied a group of fast food workers (and rejected applicants) in Harlem. Newman chronicled this study in another book, but she returned to New York City in 1997 and 2002 to check up on her subjects. Who had pulled themselves out of poverty over the decade, and who was still struggling? How much opportunity did the boom of the Clinton era create, and were her subjects able to take advantage of it?

The results were not statistically reliable (though Newman shows they are not out of line with larger statistical studies), but they provided some interesting insights. About a third of her subjects had reasonably stable lower-middle-class livelihoods. Another third were doing better than they were in 1993 -- though they were still poor -- and another third had seen little or no improvement in their lives. For many of Newman's subjects, hard work and determination had paid off.

That said, it seems clear from the case studies that hard work and determination were necessary but not sufficient. The successful subjects had assistance that helped them get ahead: a partner or grandparent able to look after the kids, a mentoring boss, a work-study program, connections to union jobs, even a year on welfare while focusing on school. The workers who fell behind have been the ones who could not rely on family networks or public assistance.

There's no mention of Maslow in the book, but his theories seem to apply. There's no way to get ahead if you're scraping along trying to meet your most basic needs for food and shelter, child care or medicine. Survival takes up all your time and energy. And while I don't believe any social net can catch everyone, it seems like we could be doing more on this front. (The book is a few years old, but somehow I don't think we made a lot of improvements in people's lives between 2002 and 2010.)

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you've read No Shame in My Game, this book details the not-quite-ten-year (not as well-funded) follow-up study, and I found it interesting to see how the lives of former Harlem fast-food workers had evolved. Some had done quite well, which was surprising and uplifting. If you've not read No Shame in My Game skip Chutes and Ladders and read the former, instead. Although this latest piece is interesting, it doesn't make the contributions to sociological theory that the first book does.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The individual stories of people trying to rise above poverty were really interesting. The author went a little too far trying to draw conclusions about the paths out of poverty based on 100 applicants for Burger Barn jobs in NYC, but it was still pretty good.

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book's subject matter is interesting, but it's too much of an ethnographical study to be a good read.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great case studies that personalize the issues of the working-poor.

[Elizabeth]

As heard on the Planet Money podcast.