单选题 How many really suffer as a result of 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 consequences today as it did in the 1930's 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 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 over-whelming majority are 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 the 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 suffer. For every person counted in the monthly unemployment tallies, there is another working part-time 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 failing 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 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.

单选题 Which of the tollowing does " labor market problems" in the first sentenee refer to?
[A] Shortage of jobs providing adequate income.
[B] Deficiencies in the training of the work force.
[C] Trade relationships among producers of goods.
[D] The overall causes of poverty.

单选题 The author contrasts the 1930's with the present in order to show that______.
[A] more people were unemployed in the 1930's
[B] social programs are more needed now
[C] unemployment now has less severe effects
[D] there now is a greater proportion of elderly and handicapped people among those in poverty

单选题 Which of the following proposals best responds to the issues raised by the author?
[A] hmovative programs using multiple approaches should be set up to reduce the level of unemployment.
[B] A compromise should be found between the positions of those who view joblessness an evil greater than economic control and those who hold the opposite view.
[C] New statistical indices should be developed to measure the degree to which unemployment and inadequately paid employment cause suffering.
[D] Consideration should be given to the ways in which statistics can act as partial causes of the phenomena that they purport to measure.

单选题 The author's purpose in citing those who are repeatedly unemployed during a twelve-month period is most probably to show that
[A] there are several factors that cause the payment of low wages to some members of the labor force
[B] unemployment statistics can underestimate the hardship resulting from joblessness
[C] recurrent inadequacies in the labor market can exist and can cause hardships for individual workers
[D] a majority of those who are jobless at any one time does not suffer severe hardship

单选题 According to the text, one factor that causes unemployment and earnings figures to over predict the amount of economic hardship is the______.
[A] recurrence of periods of unemployment for a group of low-wage workers
[B] fact that unemployment counts do not include those who work for low wages
[C] establishment of a system of record keeping that makes it possible to compile poverty statistics
[D] prevalence, among low-wage workers and the unemployed, of members of families in which others are employed