Atlantic buys low-waged life account from Bloodworth

Political commentator James Bloodworth is to write Hired, a book exploring the realities of low-wage life in the UK, for Atlantic Books.

Mike Harpley, editorial director for non-fiction at Atlantic Books, commissioned Bloodworth in a deal negotiated by David Smith of Annette Green Authors’ Agency.

In order to write this book Bloodworth has left his post as editor of political blog Left Foot Forward and will spend four months working in jobs that pay less than the living wage. He will fund all his living costs from the wages he receives and will therefore be “living a life on the edge of poverty in some very shabby dwellings and mixing with some of the 11 million adults for whom this level is a permanent way of life".

Atlantic will publish Hired in 2017.

Bloodworth's latest book The Myth of Meritocracy: Why Working Class Kids Still Get Working Class Jobs, is to be published on 19th May as part of Biteback's Provocations series. The book is a “powerful polemic exposing the fundamental dishonesty of those who insist that the UK has a meritocratic social and economic system” and was commissioned by Olivia Beattie, managing editor at Biteback.

Bloodworth is a columnist for the International Business Times and has written on various political topics for the Times, Guardian and Wall Street Journal, among others.