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  3. How many people are suffering from labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questio

How many people are suffering from labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questio

admin2010-09-25  46
问题      How many people are suffering from labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questions. In many ways, our social statistics exaggerate the degree of hardship. Unemployment does not have the same dire (可怕的) consequences today as it did in the 1930s when most of the unemployed were primary breadwinners, when income and earnings were usually much closer to the margin of subsistence, and when there were no countervailing social programs for those failing in the labor market. Increasing affluence, the rise of families with more than one wage earner, the growing predominance of secondary earners among the unemployed, and improved social welfare protection have unquestionably mitigated (减轻) the consequences of joblessness. Earnings and income data also overstate the dimensions of hardship. Among the millions with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage level, the overwhelming majority is from multiple earners, relatively affluent families. Most of those counted by the poverty statistics are elderly or handicapped or have family responsibilities which keep them out of the labor force, so the poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labor market pathologies.
     Yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market-related hardship. The unemployment counts exclude millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so low that their families remain in poverty. Low wages and repeated or prolonged unemployment frequently interact to undermine the capacity for self-support. Since the number experiencing joblessness at some time during the year is several times the number unemployed in any month, those who suffer as a result of forced idleness can equal or exceed average annual unemployment, even though only a minority of the jobless in any month really suffers. For every person counted in the monthly unemployment tallies, there is another part-time working because of the inability to find fulltime work, or else outside the labor force but wanting a job. Finally, income transfers in our country have always focused on the elderly, disabled, and dependent, neglecting the needs of the working poor, so that the dramatic expansion of cash and in kind transfers does not necessarily mean that those failings in the labor market are adequately protected.
     As a result of such contradictory evidence, it is uncertain whether those suffering seriously as a result of labor market problems number in the hundreds of thousands or the tens of millions, and hence, whether high levels of joblessness can be tolerated or must be countered by job creation and economic stimulus. There is only one area of agreement in this debate—that the existing poverty, employment, and earnings statistics are inadequate for one of their primary applications, measuring the consequences of labor market problems.  
The author contrasts the 1930s with the present in order to show that ______.
选项 A、more people were unemployed in the 1930s
B、social programs are more needed now
C、unemployment now has less severe effects
D、now there is a greater proportion of elderly and handicapped people among those in poverty
答案C
解析 推断题。由文章第一段第四句可知，20世纪30年代的失业人员主要是家中的生活来源，而现在的失业结果并没有以前那么可怕，所以比较的目的是说明如今失业的后果并没有以前那么严重。强干扰项A指出了20世纪30年代有更多的人失业，从义中并不能得出这个结论，故排除。
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