Based on Ehrenreich’s experiment (all three parts), what is the most difficult aspect of being a low-wage worker and why?

I would say that poverty is the most crushing part of the novel: it is a cycle that is very difficult to get out of. Poverty is not just a side-effect of unemployment; rather, those fully employed can slip into the deepest poverty, with wages too low to cover rising rents. What is more, low-wage work itself is often grueling, withering, leading the way to ailments and pains, and permeated with a callow sense of dehumanization: Wal-Mart treats its employees like babies, while The Maids instructs ill workers to “work through it”. Ehrenreich calls the state of the poor in America “a state of emergency” and concludes her book with a plea for help.