Passage 1
The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was just as gloomy as anticipated. Unemployment in January jumped to a 16-year high of 7.6 percent, as 598,000 jobs were slashed from US payrolls in the worst single-month decline since December, 1974. With 1.8 million jobs lost in the last three months, there is urgent desire to boost the economy as quickly as possible. But Washington would do well to take a deep breath before reacting to the grim numbers.
Collectively, we rely on the unemployment figures and other statistics to frame our sense of reality. They are a vital part of an array of data that we use to assess if we're doing well or doing badly, and that in turn shapes government policies and corporate budgets and personal spending decisions. The problem is that the statistics aren't an objective measure of reality; they are simply a best approximation. Directionally, they capture the trends, but the idea that we know precisely how many are unemployed is a myth. That makes finding a solution all the more difficult.
First, there is the way the data is assembled. The official unemployment rate is the product of a telephone survey of about 60,000 homes. There is another survey, sometimes referred to as the “payroll survey” that assesses 400,000 businesses based on their reported payrolls. Both surveys have problems. The payroll survey can easily double-count someone: if you are one person with two jobs, you show up as two workers. The payroll survey also doesn't capture the number of self-employed, and so says little about how many people are generating an independent income.
The household survey has a larger problem. When asked straightforwardly, people tend to lie or shade the truth when the subject is sex, money or employment. If you get a call and are asked if you're employed, and you say yes, you're employed. If you say no, however, it may surprise you to learn that you are only unemployed if you've been actively looking for work in the past four weeks; otherwise, you are “marginally attached to the labour force” and not actually unemployed.
The urge to quantify is embedded in our society. But the idea that statisticians can then capture an objective reality isn't just impossible. It also leads to serious misjudgments. Democrats and Republicans can and will take sides on a number of issues, but a more crucial concern is that both are basing major policy decisions on guesstimates rather than looking at the vast wealth of raw data with a critical eye and an open mind.
What do we learn from the first passage?
原文第一段主要描述美国经济状况的糟糕境况，其他三项并未提及。故答案选A。
What does the author think of the unemployment figures and other statistics?
根据原文第二段第三句“The problem is that the statistics aren't an objective measure of reality; they are simply a best approximation.” 可知，失业数据并非完全客观。故答案选D。
One problem with the payroll survey is that ________.
根据原文第三段最后一句话“The payroll survey also doesn't capture the number of self-employed”可知，工资单调查的另外一个问题是不能计算个体经营者。根据第三段第三句“…that assesses 400,000 businesses based on their reported payroll”可知选项A错误。第三段第五句“The payroll survey can easily double-count someone”指的是重复计算，并非夸大，因此选项C错误。文章未提及选项D。故答案选B。
The household survey can be faulty in that ________.
根据原文第四段第二句 “When asked straightforwardly, people tend to lie or shade the truth when the subject is sex, money or employment.”可知，人们通常倾向撒谎和隐瞒真相。选项A表述过于片面。选项B文章未提及。而根据段落最后一句可知 “you are only unemployed if you've been actively looking for work in the past four weeks; otherwise, you are “marginally attached to the labour force” and not actually unemployed.”，文章给出了失业的定义，因此选项D错误。故答案选C。
At the end of the passage, the author suggests that ________.
根据原文第五段可知两个党派都应该用批判的眼光和开放的思 维来看待失业统计数据。文章并未提及选项A和C。根据原文第五段 第四句 “Democrats and Republicans can and will take sided on a number of issues”可判断两个党派并非要共同合作，因此选项D错误。故答案选B。