i have a problem

Question

Ellen is downloading labor market data for the most recent month, but her connection is slow. So far this is all she has been able to collect:

 

Unemployment rate	6%
Participation rate	62.5%
Not in the labor force	63.5 million

Find the working-age population, the labor force, the number of employed workers, and the number of unemployed workers.

Instructions: Enter your responses rounded to one decimal place.

Working-age population:   million

 

Labor force:   million

 

Number of employed workers:   million

Number of unemployed workers:   million

Answer 1

Hi Aisha, here is the answer to your question.

Let us denote the number of people in the working age population by the alphabet X.

We know that X = # of people in the labor force + # of people not in the labor force

The labor force participation rate 62.5%, So 62.5% of the working age population is in the labor force. This implies that 100% - 62.5% = 37.5% of the working age population is not in the labor force. Thus 37.5% of X is not in the labor force. We are, however, given that the number of people not in the labor force is 63.5 million.

Thus, 37.5% of X = 63.5 million. Or, X = (63.5 million)/0.375 = 169.3 million.

Thus, the number of people in the working age population is 169.3 million.

Labor force is 62.5% of the working age population.

So Labor Force = 62.5% of 169.3 million = 105.8 million.

The unemployment rate is 6%.

So, the number of people unemployed = 6% of the labor force = 6% of 105.8 = 6.3 million.

The number of people employed = Labor Force - Number of Unemployed = 105.8 million - 6.3 million = 99.5 million.

Summing up:

Working age Population = 169.3 million.

Labor Force = 105.8 million.

# of employed = 99.5 million

# of unemployed = 6.3 million