Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99 per year.
Subscribe for Full Access
August 2014 Issue [Report]

The End of Retirement

When you can’t afford to stop working

Weeks after leaving her job at Amazon’s warehouse in Fernley, Nevada, migrant worker Linda May still suffers from repetitive strain injuries. All photographs © Max Whittaker

On Thanksgiving Day of 2010, Linda May sat alone in a trailer in New River, Arizona. At sixty, the silver-haired grandmother lacked electricity and running water. She couldn’t find work. Her unemployment benefits had run out, and her daughter’s family, with whom she had lived for many years while holding a series of low-wage jobs, had recently downsized to a smaller apartment. There wasn’t enough room to move back in with…

Subscribe or to continue reading.

 teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and is the author of Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man.



| View All Issues |

August 2014

Close
“An unexpectedly excellent magazine that stands out amid a homogenized media landscape.” —the New York Times
Subscribe now

Debug