Sarah Jaffe, "Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone" (Bold Type Books, 2021)

In Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (Bold Type Books, 2021), Sarah Jaffe argues that modern culture encourages workers to see their jobs as a “labor of love.” This idea tells people that passion and dedication should motivate them more than pay or working conditions. Jaffe shows that this belief often allows employers to justify low wages, long hours, and poor treatment. Through stories of workers across many fields, such as teachers, domestic workers, nonprofit employees, artists, athletes, and tech workers, the book demonstrates how devotion to work is used to normalize exploitation. Jaffe calls for a reevaluation of the relationship between work, identity, and personal fulfillment, suggesting that workers should organize collectively and demand fair compensation and conditions instead of relying on passion alone.

Sarah Jaffe is a journalist and labor reporter who writes about work, inequality, and social movements. Her work has appeared in major publications such as The Nation, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. Jaffe has long reported on labor struggles and worker organizing, including movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for $15 campaign. She is also the author of Necessary Trouble and most recently From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in A World on Fire. She is co-host of the labor podcast Belabored. Her writing focuses on how economic systems shape everyday life and workers’ experiences.

My co-producer on this episode is Kelly Knight, a graduate student in the MA program in Communication at Oakland University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(600)

Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks, and Gigs in the Age of Service Work with Annie McClanahan (Princeton UP, 2026)

Beneath the Wage: Tips, Tasks, and Gigs in the Age of Service Work (Princeton UP, 2026) retheorizes capitalism from the perspective of the service economy, challenging conventional assumptions about h...

18 Loka 49min

Making Sense of China's Economy with Tao Wang and Michael Leger (Routledge, 2023)

Making Sense of China's Economy (Routledge, 2023) untangles China’s complex economic structure, evolving issues and curious contradictions, and explains some key features of this most puzzling of glob...

13 Loka 53min

The Hypocrisy Trap: How Changing What We Criticize Can Improve Our Lives with Michael Hallsworth (MIT Press, 2026)

In our increasingly distrusting and polarized world, accusations of hypocrisy are everywhere. But our attempts to stamp out hypocrisy may backfire, creating what Michael Hallsworth calls The Hypocris...

4 Loka 49min

Smuggling Law: Unsettled Sovereignties in Turkey's Kurdish Borderlands with Fırat Bozçalı (Stanford UP, 2025)

The Kurdish-populated Wan/Van Province is a major smuggling hub between Turkey and Iran. Kurdish smugglers cross this 180-mile-long land border, transporting everyday consumer goods—fuel, tobacco, sug...

29 Syys 1h

The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st-Century Fascism with Max Haiven (MIT Press, 2026)

A provocative examination of the ways our economy has been rigged by financialization, and the importance of games to our dangerous political moment. In an age when capitalism feels like an unwinnable...

28 Syys 58min

Joshua Specht, "Property Values: The Rise and Fall of the American Homeowner" (Princeton UP, 2026)

As affordability crises once limited to coastal cities have spread across the broader United States, the history of home and land ownership has never been more relevant. In Property Values: The Rise a...

21 Syys 1h 1min

Conor Harrison, "Brokers of Power: The Financialization of the US Electricity System" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

The twenty-first century has seen major transformations in the US electricity sector—but while the use of coal power wanes and the need for renewable energy becomes more urgent, financial actors maint...

19 Syys 37min

Leda M Perez, "Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America" (Temple UP, 2026)

How can we achieve lasting social and political equality for women? Dr. Leda Pérez tackles this thorny question in Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin Ameri...

13 Syys 58min