I went 'Goodness!' Call me naive, but when I see a RV, I assume it's owned by one of the last of great pensioners enjoying retirement and going to see the National Parks. I had read a story in Mother Jones and it mentioned a woman working in a warehouse who was living in a RV and said she couldn't afford to retire. Jessica Bruder: It grew out of a story I wrote for Harper’s in 2014. Next Avenue: How did you come to write Nomadland? I recently interviewed Bruder to learn more about the lives in Nomadland and what the future holds for these people: They're downwardly mobile older Americans in mobile homes.ĭuring her three years doing research for the book, conducting hundreds of interviews and traversing 15,000 miles, Bruder even tried living the difficult nomad life she lasted one workweek. As Bruder writes, these are “people who never imagined being nomads.” Many saw their savings wiped out during the Great Recession or were foreclosure victims and, writes Bruder, "felt they'd spent too long losing a rigged game." Some were laid off from high-paying professional jobs. Living on less than $1,000 a month, in certain cases, some have no hot showers. The "workamper" jobs range from helping harvest sugar beets to flipping burgers at baseball spring training games to Amazon’s “CamperForce,” seasonal employees who can walk the equivalent of 15 miles a day during Christmas season pulling items off warehouse shelves and then returning to frigid campgrounds at night.
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