A country’s labor force is the sum of the number of employed and unemployed workers. The accompanying table provides data on the size of the labor force and the number of unemployed workers for different regions of the United States.

a. Calculate the number of workers employed in each of the regions in April 2013 and April 2014. Use your answers to calculate the change in the total number of workers employed between April 2013 and April 2014.

b. For each region, calculate the growth in the labor force from April 2013 to April 2014.

c. Compute unemployment rates in the different regions of the country in April 2013 and April 2014.

d. What can you infer about the fall in unemployment rates over this period? Was it caused by a net gain in the number of jobs or by a large fall in the number of people seeking jobs?

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Labor force (thousands) Region April 2013 April 2014 Northeast South Midwest West 28,407.2 28,288.9 56,787.8 57,016.4 34,320.0 34,467.0 36,122.2 36,307.3 Unemployed (thousands) April 2013 April 2014 2,174.4 1,781.3 4,089.9 3,363.8 2,473.7 2,109.0 2,940.8 2,535.7