Exercise 1. Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow. Refer to the text to check your answers when appropriate.
Labour market problems
How many really suffer as a result of labour 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 bread-winners, when income and earnings were usually much closer to the margin of subsistence, and when there were no countervailing social programmes for those failing in the labour 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 labour force, so the poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labour market pathologies. Yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labour-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 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 month unemployment tallies, there is another working part-time because of the inability to find full-time work, or else outside the labour 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 labour market are adequately protected. As a result of such contradictory evidence, it is uncertain whether those suffering seriously as a result of labour 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 of their primary applications, measuring the consequences of labour market problems.
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1. Which of the following is the principle topic of the passage?
a) What causes labour market pathologies that result in suffering.
b) Why income measures are imprecise in measuring degrees of poverty.
c) Which of the currently used statistical procedures are the best for estimating the incidence of hardship that is due to unemployment.
d) Where the areas of agreement are among poverty, employment, and earnings figures.
e) How social statistics give an unclear picture of the degree of hardship caused by low wages and insufficient employment opportunities.
2. The author uses "labour market problems" in lines 1–2 to refer to which of the following?
a) The over all causes of poverty.
b) Deficiencies in the training of the work force.
c) Trade relationships among producers of goods.
d) Shortages of jobs providing adequate income.
e) Strikes and inadequate supplies of labour.
3. The author contrasts the 1930's with the present in order to show that…
a) more people were unemployed in the 1930's;
b)unemployment now has less severe effects;
c) social programmes are more needed now;
d) there now is a greater proportion of elderly and handicapped people among those in poverty;
e) poverty has increased since the 1930's.
4. Which of the following proposals best responds to the issues raised by the author?
a) Innovative programmes using multiple approaches should be set up to reduce the level of unemployment.
b) A compromise should be found between the positions of those who view joblessness as an evil greater than economic control and those who hold the opposite view.
c)New statistical indices should be developed to measure the degree to which unemployment and inadequately paid employment cause suffering.
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d) Consideration showed be given to the ways in which statistics can act as partial causes of the phenomena that they purport to measure.
e) The labour force should be restructured so that it corresponds to the range of job vacancies.
5. 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 labour force;
b) unemployment statistics can underestimate the hardship resulting from joblessness;
c) recurrent inadequacies in the labour market can exist and can cause hardships for individual workers;
d) a majority of those who are jobless at any one time do 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.
6. The author states that the mitigating effect of social programmes involving income transfers on the income level of low-income people is often not felt by…
a)the employed poor;
b) dependent children in single-earner families;
c) workers who become disabled;
d) workers who become retired;
e) full-time workers who become unemployed.
7. 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 workers;
c) fact that unemployment counts do not include those who work for low wages and remain poor;
d) establishment of 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 other are employed.
8. The conclusion stated about the number of people who suffer as a result of forced idleness depends primarily on the point that…
a) in times of high unemployment, there are some people who do not remain unemployed for long;
b) the capacity for self-support depends on receiving moderate-to-high wages;
c) those in forced idleness include, besides the unemployed, both underemployed part-time workers and those not actively seeking work;
d)at different times during the year, different people are unemployed;
e) many of those who are affected by unemployment are dependents of unemployed workers.
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