Question

Suppose the town of boone has a total population of 50,000 people. of those, 45,000 people are employed. there are 1,000 full-time students who are not employed or actively seeking work. the rest of the people are out of work but have been actively seeking work within the past four weeks. instructions: in part a, round your answer to 1 decimal place. in part b, enter your answer as a whole number.
a. what is boone's unemployment rate?

Answer 1

Population - 50,000
Employed - 45,000
Students not looking for work - 1,000

To calculate Boone's unemployment rate you'll use the formula: 
Unemployment rate = number of people unemployed / labor force

Those that fall into the unemployment category are those that are not working but are actively looking/wanting to work. Students, stay-at-home moms etc that are not wanting to work, though unemployed, to not fall into this category.

The labor force is made up of everyone willing and able to work.

First, let's subtract the students who are not looking for work from the population so get the labor force. 50,000 - 1,000 = 49,000 (labor force)

Next, to get the number of people unemployed let us subtract the labor force of 49,000 by those already employed of 45,000. 49,000 - 45,000 = 4,000

Finally, we are able to calculate the unemployment rate of Boone. 
Unemployment rate = number of people unemployed / labor force
Unemployment rate = 4,000/49,000= .081 multiply by 100 to get the percentage. 8.1%
Unemployment rate of Boone is 8.1%