Employment costs rose 2.8 percent in the 12 months that ended in September, slightly less than they did in the year that ended in the previous quarter.

(A) less than they did
(B) less than it did
(C) less than they were
(D) lower than
(E) lower than they were

Is "Employment costs" a countable/uncountable item.

How to select between option "A" and "C"

Thanks

In my view "employment costs" is uncountable, I am still seeking intructors's explanations :)

i think employment costs is a countable..i will go with choice E.
what's the answer?

Although I don't think it is the relevant issue in this one, "employment costs" might be either countable or uncountable, depending on the context. You could count the various components (employment costs = hiring + training + salary + benefits + etc.). On the other hand, you could lump all of these costs into one amount, which would be uncountable.

Uncountable is probably the intended meaning here, as it says the costs "rose" not "increased in number."

Either "less" or "lower" could work with an uncountable quantity, so what do we really need to know about these words?
--"less" is a comparative that means "smaller in size, amount, degree, etc."
--"lower" is a comparative that is the opposite of higher.

I think the relevant amount is not the "employment costs" but the percent by which the costs rose. I think "less than" more clearly conveys the idea that employment costs rose 2.8% in the year ending in September, while employment costs rose <2.8% in the year ending in June.

If you wanted to use "lower than" correctly, you would need a noun in the second part of the comparison (e.g. "2.8% is lower than the percent for last quarter). Both (D) and (E) can be eliminated on this basis. (D) has no noun in the second part of the comparison. (E) has "they" = costs, which is the wrong noun, in the second part of the comparison.


The only difference between (A) and (C) is the verb. Consider parallelism with the other verbs that share the subject.

(A) Employment costs rose 2.8 percent in ..., slightly less than they (employment costs) did in ...
(C) Employment costs rose 2.8 percent in ..., slightly less than they (employment costs) were in ...

The active verb "rose" parallels the active "did." There's a name for this: proform. Basically, "did" replaces "rose" in much the same way that a pronoun might replace a noun. It is understood that "did" = "rose."

You've probably heard something like this in speech: "Did you say the sun rose already?" "Yes, it did." (same idea: it = the sun, did = rose). "Yes, it were" is an incorrect response.

_________________
Emily Sledge
Instructor
ManhattanGMAT

To esledge:

I think that whether "employment costs" is countable or not does matter. Since if the term were uncountable, I'd have a reason to choose B over A because B uses "it" rather than "they" to refer to "employment costs", right?

If not, can I conclude that both "it" and "they" can refer to an uncountable noun? And how can we distinguish between A and B?

I'm really confused here

yeah, some uncountable nouns are plural. for instance, “taxes” is a plural noun, but the concept that it represents is uncountable (taxes are not things that you can separate into one, two, three,…)
so, you would say my taxes are less than they were last year, not [i]my taxes are fewer than they were last year[i].



there's no arguing with the fact that “costs” is a plural noun, so (b) is wrong.

Ohhh thanks a lot for detailing this out.. these questions have always been a pain!

so the take away...

If we want to use "lower than" we need 2 countable nouns on both the sides, so are the below correct?

Example : The money that we won last game is lower than that (money) of the previous.
The money that we won is last game is 12£ slightly less than the previous game.




Option A " Employment costs rose 2.8 percent in the 12 months that ended in September, slightly less than they DIDin the year that ended in the previous quarter.

So to take things literally how can money do anything? A company can do something about it!

Example A company took in more overseas projects, so that taxes rose slightly more than they [b]were [/b]last year.

Could you please explain little more in detail how to eliminate C and select A... I selected C thinking costs cant do anything by itself. Please help. Thanks in anticipation..

Cheers
JP

OA should be D

B is wrong because of "it"

C and E are wrong because of "were"

That doesn't answer my question...! help !

no; “lower” cannot be used with countable things.

in general, i can only think of three types of nouns for which you can use “lower” as a quantifier:

1/ mathematical quantities (things that can be represented by actual numbers)
e.g.
this number is lower than that other number
this percentage is lower than that other percentage (like the example here)
this interest rate is lower than that other interest rate

... so, note that one amount of money can be “lower” than another amount of money.

2/ abstract ideas that aren't necessarily numbers, but that can be thought of as somewhat quantitative (i.e., you can conceptualize the idea of "more" or "less" for these things, even though you can't assign numbers to them)
e.g.
i hold Jim in lower esteem than i hold his brother.
these tasks have lower priority than those other tasks

3/ things that are literally (= physically) lower than other things
e.g.
the elevation of Medellín is lower than that of Bogotá
the ceiling in my new apartment is lower than the one in my old house

under no circumstances can a countable plural noun be “lower” than another countable plural noun, unless you are referring to differences in physical height (e.g., my ceilings are lower than yours -- this means that they are physically closer to the ground, not that there are fewer of them!)




you can use "do" to stand for any action verb.

what you need to realize here is that “action verb” is a very, very inclusive definition -- it's basically any verb at all, other than forms of to be (is, was, will be, etc.) and helping verbs (can, will, etc.)



this is wrong. you can't use "were" unless there's another form of "to be" in the other half of the parallelism.

"do" is an action verb -- it's something that employment costs can do: they can go up.

think about the way these kinds of verbs are used in everyday language. it's perfectly normal and universal usage to say “housing prices dropped”. notice that this is another action verb.
you seem to be objecting to this usage on the basis that costs/prices don't move all by themselves -- i.e., that some human action is ultimately the trigger of that movement -- but, if language had to be that precise, then it would become difficult or impossible to write just about anything meaningful about anything.