Q16 - Economist: If the economy grows stronger, employment

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
If the economy grows stronger:
a) employment will increase
b) more parents will need day care
c) many day care workers will quit for better paying jobs

Therefore, if the economy grows, it'll probably be harder to find day care.

Answer Anticipation:
Based on the premises, it's possible to conclude that if the economy grows stronger, many day care workers will leave the industry. However, this isn't what the conclusion states - it states it'll be harder to find day care. Maybe a growing economy will have another effect that mitigates the leaving workers (either by drawing in more people to work in day care to balance out those who are leaving, or by decreasing demand for day care). The correct answer will have to rule out at least one of these possibilities.

Correct answer:
(B)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Degree. As long as there are enough new, higher paying jobs to draw many day care workers into them, most new jobs don't have to pay better.

(B) This achieves exactly what we anticipated. If the number of new day care workers won't make up for the deficit, day care may very well be harder to come by. The negation - The number of new works will be significantly greater than the number leaving - kills the argument.

(C) Out of scope. The argument cares about the number of day care workers, not the number working at day-care centers. It's possible almost all day care workers are freelance, or that the better economy will cause workers to strike out on their own.

(D) Out of scope. This tells us what might happen if employment does not increase (unless = if not). We're only concerned with what happens if employment increases since both the premise and conclusion are predicated on that.

(E) Out of scope. While we know many day care workers will leave the industry and demand is going up, we can't guarantee from this that the cost of day care will increase significantly. Something might happen to drive costs down despite an increase in demand. Without knowing that costs will go up, we can't say this answer definitely applies to the situation at hand.

Takeaway/Pattern:
For Necessary Assumption questions, it's more important to have a general idea of the gap in the argument than it is to have a specific prediction.

#officialexplanation

[xjiang.xj]

Both B and C seem right to me. What's the difference between them? How do I choose B over C during a test?

[crocca]

I was also between B and C, and unfortunately chose C in the practice exam. I now see two reasons that it's incorrect. As the MP tutor mentioned, it references workers in day-care centers instead of day-care workers. Day-care workers don't necessarily have to work in centers, and so this answer choice doesn't totally address what the stimulus is talking about. Also, in the stimulus, it says that MORE parents will need day care. If we negate C, "number of workers NOT likely to decrease", this doesn't weaken the argument because there are still more parents that need day care, and there could still be a shortage.

Hope this helps!

[seychelles1718]

Is "more parents will need to find day care" an intermediate conclusion? If so, is it also possible that this question could've tested on the gap between the minor premise and the intermediate conclusion?

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, I think both of those are fair.

That first sentence has some argumentative structure, so we COULD be asked about the gap between
"employment increases" and "more parents need to find day care".

Such as,
"At least some of the new jobs in a stronger economy would be claimed by people who have children."

[DavidS899]

I predicted answer choice B but when I read C I chose it instead.

Why? Because the way I read it, if B were to be true C would have to be true also. I saw that C mentioned "day care centers" and that made me pause, but I accepted that would not be the condition for making this answer choice wrong because it is reasonable to expect in the English language that day-care workers in fact all work at day-cares, and a "day- care center" is just another phrase for a day-care.

Even if some day-care workers are freelance they still can only perform their work at day-cares (or day-care centers.) Even if they open up their basement for their work and only watch after friends of friends kids they still advertise it as a day-care. Anyways.

[RichW609]

I also got stuck between B and C. Beyond the extremely ticky-tack language switch (even by LSAT standards), quick two cents from an Econ perspective: We know demand of day care is increasing (more parents need to find Day Care), so it will be more difficult to find if supply of Day care workers goes down OR stays the same (demand goes up and supply stays same=more difficult to find). Answer C only says it goes down whereas answer B says supply of Day Care workers wont go up i.e either stays the same or goes down. So answer B is more comprehensive.