Unemployment

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Unemployment

by adi_800 » Sun Jul 25, 2010 2:03 am
How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questions. In many ways, our social statistics exaggerate the degree of hardship. Unemployment does not have the same dire consequences today as it did in the 1930's when most of the unemployed were primary breadwinners, when income and earnings were usually much closer to the margin of subsistence, and when there were no countervailing social programs for those failing in the labor market. Increasing affluence, the rise of families with more than one wage earner, the growing predominance of secondary earners among the unemployed, and improved social welfare protection have unquestionably mitigated the consequences of joblessness. Earnings and income data also overstate the dimensions of hardship. Among the millions with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage level, the overwhelming majority are from multiple-earner, relatively affluent families. Most of those counted by the poverty statistics are elderly or handicapped or have family responsibilities which keep them out of the labor force, so the poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labor market pathologies.
Yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market-related hardship. The unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so low that their families remain in poverty. Low wages and repeated or prolonged unemployment frequently interact to undermine the capacity for self-support. Since the number experiencing joblessness at some time during the year is several times the number unemployed in any month, those who suffer as a result of forced idleness can equal or exceed average annual unemployment, even though only a minority of the jobless in any month really suffer. For every person counted in the monthly unemployment tallies, there is another working part-time because of the inability to find full-time work, or else outside the labor force but wanting a job. Finally, income transfers in our country have always focused on the elderly, disabled, and dependent, neglecting the needs of the working poor, so that the dramatic expansion of cash and in-kind transfers does not necessarily mean that those failing in the labor market are adequately protected.
As a result of such contradictory evidence, it is uncertain whether those suffering seriously as a result of labor market problems number in the hundreds of thousands or the tens of millions, and, hence, whether high levels of joblessness can be tolerated or must be countered by job creation and economic stimulus. There is only one area of agreement in this debate-that the existing poverty, employment, and earnings statistics are inadequate for one their primary applications, measuring the consequences of labor market problems.


According to the passage, one factor that causes unemployment and earnings figures to overpredict the amount of economic hardship is the
(A) recurrence of periods of unemployment for a group of low-wage workers
(B) possibility that earnings may be received from more than one job per worker
(C) fact that unemployment counts do not include those who work for low wages and remain poor
(D) establishment of a system of record-keeping that makes it possible to compile poverty statistics
(E) prevalence, among low-wage workers and the unemployed, of members of families in which others are employed


Why not C

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by arora007 » Sun Jul 25, 2010 3:02 am
Is the answer E ??

adi bhai...what is the source?? this seems to be stuff which one should practice...
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by adi_800 » Sun Jul 25, 2010 4:14 am
Arora...

First explanation...Source later..
:)

N yes... I also felt that this is d stuff u shud practice from...
Kinda tough passage wid length more dan what you would get...

OA is E

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by arora007 » Sun Jul 25, 2010 6:17 am
"Yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market-related hardship. The unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so low that their families remain in poverty."


As a rule... I always read the question even before reading the passage... (this assures me of better chances of a correct answer)

just looked for the keywords... "hardship" and the answer E had "low-wage" which was corresponding to the sentence before/after the keyword....

one more thing which attracted me to the answer was
"wages are so low"....and "low-wage" potential trap answers many times have the exact word repeated, which was not the case here.....so it was not a trap answer...

I clocked 6:11 minutes for the passage and the answer and I don't think my approach was foolproof... or correct....
Its just that some days it works.... as it is... If on the real GMAT I spend more time on passages like these... Its gonna Kill me..

adi bhai... could you please share which resource is this... I would also like to practice from this source... :) have GMAT in just 12 days... want to really give my best shot!
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by adi_800 » Sun Jul 25, 2010 7:46 am
This is what is present in the passage....

social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market-related hardship. The unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers...

so if they are gonna exclude the millions of fully employed workers, then how are they over predict ...

I also checked the meaning of overpredict..
'to predict by an amount that exceeds the actual value'

That is why I did not select E...

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by arora007 » Mon Aug 09, 2010 6:55 pm
I did this passage today, with 9 questions and got the one I answered that day correctly WRONG!
I got one more wrong, which I am not sure why...?

The author's purpose in citing those who are repeatedly unemployed during a twelve-month period is most probably to show that
(A) there are several factors that cause the payment of low wages to some members of the labor force
(B) unemployment statistics can underestimate the hardship resulting from joblessness
(C) recurrent inadequacies in the labor market can exist and can cause hardships for individual workers
(D) a majority of those who are jobless at any one time to not suffer severe hardship
(E) there are fewer individuals who are without jobs at some time during a year than would be expected on the basis of monthly unemployment figures
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by adi_800 » Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:32 am
Most of those counted by the poverty statistics are elderly or handicapped or have family responsibilities which keep them out of the labor force, so the poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labor market pathologies.
Yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market-related hardship.

The unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so low that their families remain in poverty. Low wages and repeated or prolonged unemployment frequently interact to undermine the capacity for self-support. Since the number experiencing joblessness at some time during the year is several times the number unemployed in any month, those who suffer as a result of forced idleness can equal or exceed average annual unemployment, even though only a minority of the jobless in any month really suffer.

I think this should give the answer...

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by adi_800 » Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:38 am
Arora...
I dont know why the ans for the first question is E...
If you are gonna over predict then you should include more people..
But the passage says this : the unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so
low that their families remain in poverty.

I know its a according to the passage question, the text to which is directly present in the passage...
But i still don't get why answer is E..

Btw.. i was checking...there are 176 pages for SC forum... n only 14 pages for RC...
:)

Rest of the people too..pls contribute..

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by tuanquang269 » Tue Dec 06, 2011 8:33 pm
Can anyone solve this question from this paragraph? Please explain for your choice. Thanks.

9. Which of the following, if true, is the best criticism of the author's argument concerning why poverty statistics cannot properly be used to show the effects of problems in the labor market?

(A) For those who are in poverty as a result of joblessness, there are social programs available that provide a minimum standard of living.
(B) Poverty statistics do not consistently agree with earnings statistics, when each is taken as a measure of hardship resulting from unemployment.
(C) The elderly and handicapped categories include many who previously were employed in the labor market.
(D) Since the labor market is global in nature, poor workers in one country are competing with poor workers in another with respect to the level of wages and the existence of jobs.
(E) A short-term increase in the number of those in poverty can indicate a shortage of jobs because the basic number of those unable to accept employment remains approximately constant.

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by chufus » Tue Dec 06, 2011 10:00 pm
arora007 wrote:I did this passage today, with 9 questions and got the one I answered that day correctly WRONG!
I got one more wrong, which I am not sure why...?

The author's purpose in citing those who are repeatedly unemployed during a twelve-month period is most probably to show that
(A) there are several factors that cause the payment of low wages to some members of the labor force
(B) unemployment statistics can underestimate the hardship resulting from joblessness
(C) recurrent inadequacies in the labor market can exist and can cause hardships for individual workers
(D) a majority of those who are jobless at any one time to not suffer severe hardship
(E) there are fewer individuals who are without jobs at some time during a year than would be expected on the basis of monthly unemployment figures
Is the answer to this one "B" ?

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by DhruvXVII » Wed Dec 07, 2011 5:07 am
arora007 wrote:I did this passage today, with 9 questions and got the one I answered that day correctly WRONG!
I got one more wrong, which I am not sure why...?

The author's purpose in citing those who are repeatedly unemployed during a twelve-month period is most probably to show that
(A) there are several factors that cause the payment of low wages to some members of the labor force
(B) unemployment statistics can underestimate the hardship resulting from joblessness
(C) recurrent inadequacies in the labor market can exist and can cause hardships for individual workers
(D) a majority of those who are jobless at any one time to not suffer severe hardship
(E) there are fewer individuals who are without jobs at some time during a year than would be expected on the basis of monthly unemployment figures
arora007, please provide OA for the above question. I picked B.
If my post helped, press the 'Thank' button..

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by saintlychik » Fri Dec 23, 2011 4:41 am
I got 8 on 9 correct on this passage. But this ws the 2nd time im doing this particular piece in a period of atleast 3-4 weeks. is it a good sign?

S