If the author had been a woman of color, she might have faced additional discrimination in hiring, and found she was kept away from certain jobs, even though such hiring practices are illegal. She does note often throughout the book that many (in fact most) of her co-workers are white, so it is clear immigrants and women of color work at even lower paying jobs behind the scenes. She also notes that no matter what their color, most of the women have to have a second job just to survive. She notes, "Of my fellow servers, everyone who lacks a working husband or boyfriend seems to have a second job: Nita does something at a computer eight hours a day; another welds" (Ehrenreich 39). Thus, these women work hard at one job, but cannot rest; they go to a second job just to pay the bills, leaving little time for recreation or relaxation, even if they could afford it.

It seems that race is quite important in "life chances," but even more important is class. If these women do not do something to develop other,...

As the author so graphically discusses in her "Evaluation" at the end of the book, many low-wage workers simply do not know what is available to them, or how to access it, and so, they continue in the world of low-wage jobs, unable to break out and make better lives for themselves. Different races can actually obtain some rights and education because of their race, but poor, lower-class, low-wage workers often do not even have that available to them. It seems that life chances favor just about everyone but the lowest classes, and that sometimes, there is just nowhere to go but down, or stay right where they are. It can be blamed on any number of sociological and cultural items, but the truth is, the lowest classes in America often do not have a lot of hope for the future.
References

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. New York:…