AbdurRakib wrote:
The difference in average annual income in favor of employees who have college degrees, compared with those who do not have such degrees, doubled between 1980 and 1990. Some analysts have hypothesized that increased competition between employers for employees with college degrees drove up income for such employees.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the explanation described above?
(A) During the 1980s a growing percentage of college graduates, unable to find jobs requiring a college degree, took unskilled jobs.
(B) The average age of all employees increased slightly during the 1980s.
(C) The unemployment rate changed very little throughout the 1980s.
(D) From 1980 to 1990 the difference in average income between employees with advanced degrees and those with bachelor’s degrees also increased.
(E) During the 1980s there were some employees with no college degree who earned incomes comparable to the top incomes earned by employees with a college degree.
OG 2017 New Question
Wage Gap
Step 1: Identify the Question
The word undermines in the question stem indicates that this is a Weaken the Argument question.
Step 2: Deconstruct the Argument
Income gap between college degree & no degree:
Gap doubled from 1980 to 1990
© competition for degree employees → wages ↑
Step 3: Pause and State the Goal
On Weaken questions, the right answer is an additional fact that, when added to the argument, will make the conclusion less likely to be correct. In this case, the correct answer will suggest that employer competition did not cause the wage gap to grow. It will accomplish this by either showing that employer competition is a poor explanation, or showing that some other factor is more likely to have caused the change.
Step 4: Work from Wrong to Right
(A) CORRECT. This answer choice shows that employer competition is a poor explanation for the wage gap increase. If a growing percentage of college graduates could not find jobs that required their degrees, there probably were few such jobs available. Since they had few appropriate job openings, employers likely were not competing for such employees (i.e. there were more than enough people with college degrees to fill such openings).
(B) There is no necessary relationship between age and education level or income, and the argument does not provide any data that relates these factors. So, information about employee age does not affect a conclusion that deals only with employee education levels and income.
(C) The conclusion refers specifically to college-educated employees. Without knowing whether the unemployment rate for this specific group of employees remained constant, no conclusions can be drawn from this answer choice.
(D) The conclusion refers specifically to employees with college degrees, and does not make a distinction between employees with advanced degrees and employees with bachelor’s degrees. Also, knowing that there is a wage gap between two groups doesn’t help to explain why there is a wage gap between two other groups.
(E) This answer choice appears to suggest that the wage gap is not as large as one might believe. However, the argument already states that the wage gap doubled between 1980 and 1990. The conclusion deals with the cause of that increase. In order to weaken the argument, an answer choice should address possible causes of the wage gap increase, not the size or existence of that gap.
The difference in average annual income between college degrees vs no college degrees doubled between 1980 and 1990.
Hypothesis: Increased competition between employers for employees with college degrees drove up income for such employees.
The increasing of the difference could be because of any factor. The hypothesis is that it is because of scarcity of college grads. We need to weaken this.
Option (A) says college grads were available in abundance, so much so that they had to take unskilled jobs. Then, college grads were not scarce. Correct.
All other options are completely irrelevant.
Answer (A)
What I am not able to understand is that if labor was in abundance "during the 1980s", how can that explain what happened in 1990s (an increase in competition for people)?
Option D, on the other hand, seems to be providing an alternate explanation that instead of some competition, maybe a general wage increase based on the kind of degree one had led to an increase in wages.
13 Nov 2020, 07:54
close
