LaMonte stores sell both diamond and pearls jewelry. Recent years have

Question

LaMonte stores sell both diamond and pearls jewelry. Recent years have shown that market demand for pearl jewelry has risen. As producing pearl jewelry takes twice as long as producing diamond jewelry, the demand for pearl jewelry continues to rise. Therefore, LaMonte will soon have to increase its staff to meet the market demand.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

A) LaMonte has the financial ware-withal to increase its staff.
B) The number of staff has remained fairly constant during recent years.
C) The average productivity of each staff member is about the same.
D) There are no faster methods of jewelry making than those practiced currently.
E) Market demand for diamond jewelry has not significantly reduced as an effect of increased demand for pearl jewelry.

JDiax · Answer

Hi,
i was pending between D and E but decided for E in the end. Can someone clarify why we can clearly rule-out D? If a faster production way is discovered, they would not need to employ additional staff. 
Thanks.

rs045871 · Answer

D speaks about jewellery, not specific about pearl jewellery.

arushigonebonkers · Answer

Can someone explain why B cannot be the answer? If staff has also increased in tandem and still pearl jewellery is taking time then hiring more people may not solve our problem.

atulpatil · Answer

Let us have a look at option B.

B) The number of staff has remained fairly constant during recent years

As per my understanding, 
This says that the number has remained constant. But, we do not know whether the 'number' of staff was in excess (high) or low.

So, we can have two arguments:
1. If the number is already high, then we do not need to increase our staff.
2. If the number is low, only then we may need to hire the staff.

So, we have two-sides to this argument and hence this option is incorrect.

This is one of the classic traps.

For example: The number of Covid cases in the country has changed.

Here, the word 'changed' could increase an possible INCREASE or DECREASE in number.

Hope this helps!

maikikiuu · Answer

I mistakenly chose D over E.

After deliberating, here is my notes:

In the prompt, there is one premise: "as producing pearl jewelry takes twice as long as producing diamond jewelry"
We will have to assume the information in given as premise is correct.

Option D is directly disputing a premise by mentioning faster methods , but not focusing on the line of reasoning: because it takes more time to process pearls and the demand is rising,  . Therefore option D is IRRELEVANT.

adyg14 · Answer

KarishmaB   GMATNinja   bb  Can you please elaborate on D vs E ?

KarishmaB · Answer

Regarding option (D), very rarely do arguments merit such generalisations if they are not mentioned in the argument itself in the first place. 
Is it necessary that there are NO faster methods? (option (D))
No. What if there are but they are super expensive and hence LaMonte doesn't use them. Or they need a special skill that very few in the world have. Or they need a certain raw material that is not available to LaMonte - the point is that there could be many faster methods but not feasible because of some reason. Another thing to note is that say there is a faster method but it could require more labour. How can we say that faster method is equivalent to fewer staff requirement. Since there is no such equivalence, option (D) is irrelevant.

An increased demand would likely mean an increased demand in staff - to make more jewellery, to handle more customers etc. But do we know if overall demand has increased? No. We only know that pearl demand has increased. If diamond demand has decreased a lot, then the overall demand may still be the same or even lesser. Then we cannot say that more staff members will be required. So we do need option (E) to be true.

Zitkin8 · Answer

Hi  KarishmaB  , can you justify the difference in my reasoning for Option C. If the productivity of the staff will not be same, then the staff can fill the gap of extra staff requirement. The more productive/efficient staff members can do the work required.

KarishmaB · Answer

Productivity = the amount of work done per hour by a worker

It is not equal to potential. Some have high productivity and some have low just means that some workers make say 100 pieces a month (likely paid more) and others make 60 pieces a month (likely paid less). But every company hires the number of workers that it needs as per the workers' capability. So the 1000 pieces per month will be made by say 7 high productivity workers + 5 low productivity workers.

When a company has high productivity workers, it doesn't mean that the company has extra manpower that it is not using.

vasu1104 · Answer

E make sense.
Because if market demand of diamond jewelry has not reduced, then there is higher demand of pearl and almost same demand of diamond. We also know that pearl takes twice amount of time to make. So now to fulfill both jewelry, they definitely need more people.
But if we negate the option, then it says demand of dismond has reduced so we can use existing staff to make more of pearl.

So E is best choice.

LaMonte stores sell both diamond and pearls jewelry. Recent years have

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LaMonte stores sell both diamond and pearls jewelry. Recent years have

Prep Toolkit

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