#16 - Economist: If the economy grows stronger, employment

[jlam061695]

Can someone explain why D is not a better answer than B? B makes perfect sense to me, and it weakens the argument when negated.

In D (reworded without the "unless"): the shortage of day care is likely to worsen when employment increases and many day-carecenter employees quit to take better-paying jobs in other fields. This is an assumption because if it the shortage was unlikely to worsen even if employment doesn't increase and day-care center employees do not quit their jobs, then it would weaken the argument that it would be harder to find day-care (because it wouldn't be).

[Kristina Moen]

Can someone explain why D is not a better answer than B? B makes perfect sense to me, and it weakens the argument when negated.

In D (reworded without the "unless"): the shortage of day care is likely to worsen when employment increases and many day-carecenter employees quit to take better-paying jobs in other fields. This is an assumption because if it the shortage was unlikely to worsen even if employment doesn't increase and day-care center employees do not quit their jobs, then it would weaken the argument that it would be harder to find day-care (because it wouldn't be).

Hi jlam,

Careful with the Unless Equation. You have reworded it with the necessary as the sufficient. The word "unless" indicates a necessary condition. So here, "employment increases and many day-care center employees quit to take better-paying jobs in other fields" is the necessary condition, not the sufficient. You take the other part and negate. You did that part correctly. So this would actually turn into:
shortage of day-care likely to worsen employment increases and many day-care center employees quit to take better paying jobs in other field.

Negating a conditional statement is tricky. You basically negate it as "The necessary condition is not required for the sufficient." Two ways of writing that are "the sufficient could happen even if the necessary doesn't happen" or "if the sufficient happens, the necessary doesn't have to happen." So to negate answer choice (D), you would say that "The shortage of day-care could be likely to worsen, even if employment doesn't increase and day-care employees do not quit to take better paying jobs." That does not kill the argument, so answer choice (D) is not an Assumption of the argument. The argument does not assume that the ONLY way for the day-care shortage to worsen is for those conditions (employment increases & day-care workers quitting) to happen. To come up with a hypothetical, there could be a Baby Boom (increase in births)!

Let's negate answer choice (B). We would negate it to "If the economy grows stronger, the number of new day-care workers COULD be significantly greater than the number of day-care workers who move to better-paying jobs in other fields." That would kill the conclusion that "a stronger economy is likely to make it much more difficult to find day care" because there are new workers to replace the ones that are leaving.

Hope that helps.

[amacmill]

I understand why B works, but couldn't C also hurt the argument?

[AthenaDalton]

Hi amacmill,

Thanks for your question!

This is an assumption question, so we're looking for an answer choice that provides support for the economist's argument. The economist is arguing that if the economy improves, employment will increase, and it will be harder for day-care centers to keep employees on staff. Answer choice (C) tells us that if the economy improves, employment at day-care centers will decrease. The economist isn't assuming that day care centers will reduce staffing levels if the economy improves -- quite the opposite. He's arguing that they will have a tough time keeping their staffing positions filled.

Another way to test (C) is to negate it and see if it hurts the argument. The negation of (C) is "if the economy grows stronger, the number of workers employed by day-care centers is likely to increase." This negated statement doesn't hurt the economist's argument -- it makes sense that in an economy with employment growing overall, employment would grow at day-care centers as well. The economist is talking about day care centers' ability to keep good employees on staff. By contrast, answer choice (C) is talking about the number of positions available to fill. There's a slight mis-match here, which keeps (C) from being the right answer.

I hope that helps clarify things -- good luck studying!

Athena Dalton

[ronibass]

Why is answer choice A wrong? Isn't the stimulus assuming that the new jobs will be fields that pay well hence the reason day care workers would be leaving in the first place?

[Brook Miscoski]

ronibass,

The stimulus concludes that a stronger economy will make it more difficult to find daycare. The premise is that many daycare workers move to better jobs. The glaring gap is that there are other workers, too, who might have jobs that are not as good as daycare jobs or might have no jobs at all. Since you are asked for the assumption, you will close the gap or choose a supporter/defender.

Answer choice (A) states that most of the jobs will be in fields that pay well. Remember that you are doing an assumption question, so you need to focus on what's required. It's not necessary that the jobs "pay well," just that they pay better than daycare did, which is all the stimulus claims. Therefore, (A) is not a necessary assumption in that it goes too far.

Answer choice (B) is a supporter/defender choice that directly addresses the problem with the stimulus.

[Kelly R]

Hi PS,

Just want to check that my reasoning for eliminating B holds. Even if the number of workers employed by day care centers is liable to decrease, this doesn't necessarily mean that it will be much more difficult to find day care. What if the staff only decreases by 2? Technically, there has been a decrease in number of workers employed by day care centers, but it hardly seems that this decrease is substantial enough to make it *much* more difficult to find day care. Thanks for your help!

[Paul Marsh]

Hi Kelly! I'm a bit confused by your question, since (B) is the correct answer here. Did you mean to ask about a different answer choice?

[Kelly R]

Hi Paul,

So sorry, you're totally right. My post was in reference to answer (C). Thanks so much!

[abutz]

Hi amacmill,

Thanks for your question!

This is an assumption question, so we're looking for an answer choice that provides support for the economist's argument. The economist is arguing that if the economy improves, employment will increase, and it will be harder for day-care centers to keep employees on staff. Answer choice (C) tells us that if the economy improves, employment at day-care centers will decrease. The economist isn't assuming that day care centers will reduce staffing levels if the economy improves -- quite the opposite. He's arguing that they will have a tough time keeping their staffing positions filled.

Another way to test (C) is to negate it and see if it hurts the argument. The negation of (C) is "if the economy grows stronger, the number of workers employed by day-care centers is likely to increase." This negated statement doesn't hurt the economist's argument -- it makes sense that in an economy with employment growing overall, employment would grow at day-care centers as well. The economist is talking about day care centers' ability to keep good employees on staff. By contrast, answer choice (C) is talking about the number of positions available to fill. There's a slight mis-match here, which keeps (C) from being the right answer.

I hope that helps clarify things -- good luck studying!

Athena Dalton

Hi there! I am having trouble with this question. So, one thing from this explanation is confusing me. First of all, why do you negate it to see if it hurts the argument? How do you know when to negate the answer choices in a question? In my class, we were told that just negating is incorrect and you need to negate and swap for it to be a contrapositive. Second, wouldn't negating C actually hurt the argument? Because if it says "If the economy grows stronger, the number of workers employed by day-care centers is likely to INCREASE" completely hurts the argument that the employment will decrease because of day-care workers quitting to take better paying jobs in other fields.
Is the reason that D is wrong because it's saying that the ONLY way that there wouldn't be enough day care for families is due to an increase in day-care workers quitting to find other jobs and economy growing stronger?