Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman

I was reading this book when Obama's 2024 Summer Reading list was released, and lo and behold, this was on it. I see this as an overlap with the movie that he and his wife's production company Higher Ground, supported making--American Factory. The theme is how are people making it with the shifting ground for jobs for the American work force. The background is reflective of the increasing concentration of resources in the hands of a tiny cluster of gargantuan corporations; the transfer of manufacturing operations from the American heartland to China and the Global South, where labor is cheap; the rise of online retail, with its seductive conveniences and its indifference to the environment, and what that leaves workers who have a high school education, sometimes less. Luxury at the top, fear in the middle, serfdom at the bottom, and nobody going anywhere. The main characters all work for Town Square, a big-box mega-retailer not unlike Walmart. The book focuses on the logistics team: the people who unpack delivery trucks before dawn and break down the boxes to line the shelves. There is no protagonist, this book is one where it is every man for themselves, not because they don't function as a team, they do, but because they are all vying for a leg up on the ladder, which is both a struggle and a lot like the jockeying for position that you would see at any organization, but the consequences of not moving up is loss of health insurance, living in your car because you can't make the rent, food pantry's and no leisure time because you have to juggle three jobs. It is harrowing and it rings true.