Question

Assume the following data for a country: category number of people, millions total population 500 population under 16 years of age or institutionalized 120 not in the labor force 140 unemployed 12 part-time workers looking for full-time jobs 10 instructions: enter your answers as a whole number.

What is the size of the labor force?
A) 228
B) 240
C) 250
D) 360
What is the official unemployment rate?
A) 2.4
B) 4.8
C) 5.0
D) 6.0

Answer 1

The size of the labor force is 240 million people (Option B), and the official unemployment rate is 5% (Option C). The labor force includes all employed and unemployed persons actively seeking employment, excluding the underage, institutionalized, or those not actively seeking employment.

Step-by-step explanation:

To determine the size of the labor force in a country, we add the number of employed people to the number of unemployed people. In this case, we're given the total number of unemployed people (which includes part-time workers looking for full-time jobs) as 12 million plus 10 million, equating to 22 million. To find the labor force, we don't include those under 16, institutionalized, or not in the labor force, so we exclude 120 million that are underage or institutionalized, and 140 million not in the labor force from the total population of 500 million, giving us 240 million as the labor force size (Option B).

The official unemployment rate is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed individuals by the total labor force and then multiplying by 100 to get a percentage. Therefore, with 12 million unemployed and a labor force of 240 million, the unemployment rate is (12/240) * 100 = 5%, which corresponds to Option C.