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

OA: A

Can we use less vs. lower as a split? Please explain why each choice is correct/incorrect.

Thank you.

Hi ,
As per my understanding it should be lower as we are comparing the values of two years........

Please adivce guys.....

Lemme explain what I understand

First - it is employment costs - plural noun, so it is not the correct answer.
Second - the statement says, costs rose (this much) slightly less than .... - so less is used with rose, Lower could be used if the statement said employment costs were 2.8 percent, lower than they were.
Third - ANd did is used not were because it refers to the rise and not to the percentage itself.

we need 'less' because it's an ADVERB.

the sentence is unambiguously saying that the costs ROSE LESS than they did in the previous year, for at least two very, very good reasons:
(1) that's the meaning conveyed by the original sentence; remember, unless the meaning of the original sentence is nonsense, you MUST preserve it.
(2) we know for a fact that employment costs are NOT "lower" than they were in the other year mentioned - because they've risen by 2.8%. for the costs themselves to be lower, they would have to have fallen rather than risen.

therefore, the only reasonable meaning is to have an adverb that modifies 'rose'; that adverb is 'less'.

(b) is wrong because there is no antecedent for 'it'. in fact, there is not one singular noun in the entire sentence, so "it" is a complete orphan.

(c) "were" isn't parallel to "rose". alternatively, "were" makes it seem as though we're comparing the costs themselves, rather than the rates at which they rose. either way, this is wrong.

less than they did

but how come THEY is referring to EMPLYEMENT COSTS ??

THEY is generally used with LIVING THINGS ???

i agree other options are wrong but why is THEY referring to EMPLYEMENT COSTS ?? :(

"they" is used for anything plural, whether it's a thing, person, animal, or anything else.

you're probably just being temporarily forgetful here. think about how you would fill in this blank:
where's the banana? it is gone.
where are the apples? ______ are gone.

Hi Ron, If the "Lower" in D is replaced by "Less", will D be a right choice?

Yes, this sentence would be acceptable,

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

Think of it this way, with the parentheses marking an ellipsis,

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

This ellipse is permitted because the verb in the ellipsed clause is precisely the same as the earlier verb in the parallel series, costs rose... less than... costs rose.

Hi Ron/ Emily/ Tim,

Thanks for your explanation. Also, I went through video of this example in "Thur with Ron"... That was also quite helpful.

I came across another question, similar to this -

Soaring television costs accounted for more than half the spending in the presidential campaign of 1992, a greater proportion than it was in any previous election.
A. a greater proportion than it was
B. a greater proportion than
C. a greater proportion than they have been
D. which is greater than was so
E. which is greater than it has been

Since, in first half of sentence, we have FORM of "TO DO", we need action verb in 2nd half something like DID....
But in this case, since we dont have that choice, nearest possible match is B.

Is this correct explanation or I am missing out some other "mismatch"??

OA B.

that's also a valid way to eliminate, yes.

Hi Ron,
In the following sentence(from GMATPREP) which verb is modified by adverb "Less".Why I am asking this question is because i want to know whether "less" will always act as an adverb or it can be used as an adjective also in some cases.

Less than 35 years after the release of African honeybees outside Sao Paulo, Brazil, their descendants, popularly known as killer bees, had migrated as far north as southern Texas.

in that sentence, “less” is just used in a comparison with “35 years”. it's not modifying any verbs in this sentence.
(this is not to say that “less” can't modify verbs; in other contexts it can, e.g., my uncle drank less after he got married.)
the modifier that's actually modifying the following clause is “after the release of ...”; the modifier “less than 35 years” is actually modifying that modifier.

in any case, you are probably extending about 10000000 times too much effort if you're going to attempt to memorize all of the possibilities for what any given word can modify (with the exception of words that appear primarily or exclusively in modifiers, such as “which” -- those are worth memorizing).
what i've noticed is that the gmat doesn't really tend to use modifiers in ways that are grammatically incorrect -- instead, the modifier errors on the gmat tend to involve modifiers attached to constructions that make grammatical sense, but that don't make sense in terms of meaning. so, if you just assign the modifier according to basic rules, the principal issue is whether that assignment makes sense.

Got your point clearly,Ron.

glad to help

Hi Ron,

Is it not possible to think of the phrase "slightly less.." as a noun modifier (adjective) referring to "employment costs"?

Thanks