CAT Critical Reasoning Practice question with Solution 90

Because many highly-skilled Eastern European workers have emigrated, the author concludes that there is now great demand for such workers in Eastern Europe. This depends on the idea of supply and demand, the assumption being that the emigration has left a shortage of highly-skilled workers in Eastern Europe, which shortage has resulted in a high demand for skilled workers. (B) attacks this assumption by making it likely that the workers who have gone abroad haven’t left jobs behind. The jobs are disappearing along with the workers, so there’s no shortage of skilled workers for the jobs available and no necessary increase in demand. By weakening the assumption, (B) weakens the argument.

(A) eliminates the possibility that Eastern European countries would hire foreign skilled workers, so it strengthens the argument that the emigration of skilled workers would create high demand for native skilled workers.

(C) is irrelevant, because it deals only with the workers who have already left Eastern Europe, while the argument is concerned with the workers still there.

(D) and (E) strengthen the argument. If, as (D) says, there are plans to train many new workers to replace the highly-skilled ones who left, then apparently there is high demand for skilled workers. And (E) says that many positions are unfilled, which pretty much proves the author’s point.