Five past-paper questions are below. Answer on the page: each one is marked the moment you pick, the correct option is shown whether or not you found it, and the full explanation opens either way.
Employment and Unemployment: five questions to try now
Real past-paper questions, the answer key from the mark scheme, and the explanation that goes with it. No account needed to answer them.
Question 1
What is the likely impact of lower transport and communication costs on an economy?
Answer: C.
Cheaper transport and communication cut the cost of trading and producing, so firms sell into more markets and output rises, growth increases. The other options reverse the effect: falling costs encourage international trade and support employment and spending rather than reducing them.
Question 2
Which one of the following is likely to result in poverty?
Answer: B.
Low GDP per capita means little income per person, which is the direct measure of poverty in a country. High literacy and high employment reduce poverty, and low taxation affects how income is redistributed rather than how much there is to begin with.
Question 3
Which type of unemployment occurs when the demand for a product is only at certain times of the year?
Answer: C.
Demand that appears only at certain times of the year, fruit picking, ski instruction, seaside work, causes SEASONAL unemployment, and the name follows directly from the cause. Structural unemployment comes from a permanent change in the pattern of industry, cyclical from a downturn in the economy as a whole, and voluntary unemployment is a choice not to accept work at the going wage.
Question 4
Which one of the following types of unemployment is caused by changes in the business cycle?
Answer: D.
Unemployment that rises in a downturn and falls in a recovery is CYCLICAL, it follows the business cycle, which is what the question describes. Structural unemployment comes from a permanent skills mismatch, seasonal follows the calendar, and frictional is the short gap while moving between jobs.
Question 5
Which one of the following is an example of frictional unemployment?
Answer: B.
Frictional unemployment is the short gap BETWEEN jobs while workers move from one to the next, being unemployed while waiting to start a new job is exactly that. Job cuts in a global recession are cyclical, fewer fruit-farm workers in winter is seasonal, and workers displaced by machinery are structurally (technologically) unemployed.
These questions are drawn from past Edexcel IGCSE papers. You answer, you find out immediately whether you were right, and you get the reasoning for the correct option and for each distractor. Wrong answers go to a mistakes locker so you can come back to exactly those.
Practice is free. You need an account only so your progress and your mistakes are still there next time.
These are the errors that cost marks on employment and unemployment, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
Saying anyone without a job is unemployed. They must be actively looking for work.
Confusing unemployed with economically inactive.
Confusing cyclical with structural unemployment, the causes and solutions are completely different.
Suggesting higher government spending to fix structural unemployment.
Giving only the effects on the individual, and forgetting the government and the economy.
Forgetting that both measures miss discouraged workers and underemployment.