The following appeared as part of an editorial in a campus newspaper:
“With an increasing demand for highly skilled workers, this nation will soon face a serious labor shortage. New positions in technical and professional occupations are increasing rapidly, while at the same time the total labor force is growing slowly. Moreover, the government is proposing to cut funds for aid to education in the near future.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion, be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The argument that the slowly growing total labor force will soon cause serious labor shortage in technical and professional occupations is not well reasoned and bases on not clearly analysed facts. The editor describes the problem, however fails to analyse the status quo thoroghly and misses important aspects to substantiate the argument.
First of all, the stated fact the editor uses is not clearly analysed and hence compares two different aspects. The editor claims that the slowly growing total labor force by rapidly increasing technical and professional occupations will cause serious labor shortage. Even if the two stated facts are correct, they are not the correct numbers to compare. The total labor force includes labor force from additional areas oher than technical and professional occupations. This means, even if the total number grows slowy, it might be the case that there is enough labor for the technical and professional occupations since the labor need from other areas might be decreasing. So the fact the argumentation bases on is not analysed thoroughly and actually compares two not matching numbers.
Moreover, even the goernment is cutting funds for aid to education, it does not necessarily have a bad impact on the labor market. On the contrary, fund cutting in education may motivate academics to switch to private sector which will have a positive effect on the labor market. Again, the editor fails to analyse a fact thoroughly which causes a hole in the argumentation.
To substantiate the argumentation,the editor could have taken right numbers as the fact basis to demonstrate the expected labor shortage. The government fund cutting must also be analysed thoroughly in order to show the negative impact on the labor market.
To sum it up, the editor tries to describe the expected labor shortage by giving two facts. Even the shortage might be true, the clumsy analysis in the fact basis causes the weakness in the argumentation.
Sentence: The total labor force includes labor force from additional areas oher than technical and professional occupations.
Error: oher Suggestion: other
Sentence: This means, even if the total number grows slowy, it might be the case that there is enough labor for the technical and professional occupations since the labor need from other areas might be decreasing.
Error: slowy Suggestion: slowly
Sentence: Moreover, even the goernment is cutting funds for aid to education, it does not necessarily have a bad impact on the labor market.
Error: goernment Suggestion: government
flaws:
No. of Words: 319 350
No. of Different Words: 142 200
Sentence Length SD: 5.322 7.5
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 319 350
No. of Characters: 1621 1500
No. of Different Words: 142 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.226 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.082 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.663 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 112 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 85 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 62 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.267 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.322 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.389 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.617 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.094 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5