#10 - At the beginning of each month, companies report to

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Resolve the Paradox. The correct answer choice is (D)

The paradox here is that, despite accurate reporting and tallying of the jobs lost and gained by companies each month, the number of jobs lost during the recent recession was underestimated. We are looking for the cause of this underestimation, which needs to be some factor that was not considered by the government in creating the current reporting system. In other words, some lost jobs were not reported and to correctly answer this question, we need to figure out why.

Answer choice (A): While this is likely true, it does nothing to resolve the discrepancy. We are not trying to figure out why more total jobs were lost, we are trying to figure out why more jobs were lost than were reported to the federal government.

Answer choice (B): Since we have already been told that the figures were accurately reported and tallied, this answer choice has no possibility of resolving the discrepancy. It may be more expensive to collect and report the data, but based upon the information in the stimulus, those added expenses have not affected the overall figures.

Answer choice (C): If anything, this answer choice would serve to further confuse the issue, as those who started their own businesses may be considered to have a job, but may not yet be knowledgeable enough about the system to report their entrepreneurship as a gained job. Under such circumstances, the number of jobs lost would have been overestimated.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. If a large number of companies ceased all operations during the current recession, surely one of the operations ceased would have been the reporting of job information to the federal government. Therefore, every single job lost when that company folded would not have been reported, leading to an underestimation of jobs lost.

Answer choice (E): No differentiation is made in the stimulus between service and manufacturing jobs. This stimulus involves total jobs, and therefore any shift from manufacturing to service positions would have no effect on the overall numbers.

[saygracealways]

Hi PowerScore,

I understand why (D) is correct (it explains how the failing companies were able to accurately report job loss numbers prior to the recession, but abruptly not be able to accurately report them in the recession due to the cessation of all operations).

However, I am still struggling to wrap my head around why answer (B) is incorrect. My initial thought process was if accurately reporting employment data became more expensive, then that would explain why the companies were not able to report job loss numbers accurately. Is this answer choice incorrect because it doesn't specify "recent recession" like (D) does?

Thank you!

Best, Grace

[Frank Peter]

Hi Grace,

The problem with (B) is that a correct answer choice in a resolve the paradox question should allow both sides of the paradox to be factually correct: here, that is accurate reporting/correct tallying and underestimation of jobs lost. Our job here isn't really to try to call into question why the numbers may not actually be accurate - it's to resolve the apparent conflict between these two pieces of information. (B) is the incorrect choice for this reason. We need an answer choice that explains how we could have numbers that are accurate (at least, from the companies that are still able to report them) and correctly tallied, and yet still underreport the jobs lost.

[Mattwin1999]

So I chose D for a different reasoning than what was provided. My logic was that there would be some time delay between reporting by companies and tallying by the government, so if hypothetically, the jobs were lost immediately before the tallying, there would be some in accuracy between actual and reported job losses.

Is this an appropriate reasoning? I feel I chose D because the other answers were weak and not because D was strong.

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Matt!

I would be careful to stick with the exact wording of the facts in the stimulus here. From the stimulus, we know that companies report their net loss or gain in jobs over the past month and that their reporting was accurate. So based on those facts, there wasn't any sort of delay. The companies that submitted reports accurately reported their net loss or gain in jobs over the past month. Answer choice (D) resolves the paradox by suggesting that some companies didn't report at all. So the companies that submitted reports did so accurately. But the companies that abruptly ceased all operations never reported, thus leading to the undercounting of jobs lost--the people whose jobs it was to report job losses and gains to the government also lost their jobs!

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[oatlee]

I also don't understand why (B) is incorrect.

The stimulus says "accurate reporting by companies and correct tallying by the government," so couldn't it be the case that the companies who DID report were the ones reporting it accurately and the government correctly tallied ONLY the data that they RECEIVED? Why are you assuming that the "accurate reporting" applies to ALL companies, not just the ones that were actually reported to the government?

[Robert Carroll]

oatlee,

You're just further proving why answer choice (D) is correct! If the accurate reporting that did exist does not reflect all the numbers, because some numbers just aren't reported, why would that be? Answer choice (B) provides no answer to that question whatsoever. Answer choice (D) does - some companies just stopped existing, so wouldn't be reporting anything, but because their employees all lost those jobs, there are some jobs not being reported. All the justification you have proves why answer choice (D) is correct.

Robert Carroll