Question

In may 2020, there were 2,119,800 people in the available labor force in oregon. the unemployment rate in oregon for may 2020 was 14.2%. determine the number of people who were unemployed in oregon during may 2020. round your answer to the nearest whole number.

Answer 1

301,012

1) Considering the data, we can write out the following equivalence:

`\begin{gathered} 2,119,800---100\% \\ x--------14.2\% \end{gathered}`

2) Notice that we need to rewrite those figures as 100% =1, and 14.2% as 0.142.

Now we can calculate how many people are equivalent to that rate of unemployment:

`\begin{gathered} (2119800)/(x)=(1)/(0.142) \\ x=2119800\cdot0.142 \\ x=301,011.6\approx301,012 \end{gathered}`

Notice that we rounded off to the nearest whole number.

3) So, there were approximately 301,012 Oregonians unemployed at that time