Employment costs rose 2.8 percent in the 12 months

[JbhB682]

Most aspects of the difference between "less" and "lower" are too nuanced to be tested on this exam.

The most important piece of advice about less vs. lower is that, if you see this difference, it's probably distracting you from something more important.

Hi Experts - i see this quote from Ron and i was curious if this is true as of today ?

If "less" vs "lower" is too nuanced for this test, how can one eliminate D in that case ?

[esledge]

If I saw this one today, I'd still ask "what is lower?" and the options are the costs or the amount they rose (2.8 percent) or maybe even September? There's ambiguity: if costs are lower, that conflicts with the idea that they already rose. But to convey the idea that 2.8 percent is relatively low, something is missing: I'd want to add a noun to complete and clarify the comparison, such as "rose 2.8 percent in the 12 months..., lower than the percentage in the year that ended." It rose X percent this time, lower than the percentage (or the increase) another time.

So even if less vs. lower is too close to call meaning-wise, the choices have another difference: the clauses in choices A,B,C, and E, where the pronoun and verbs clarify the intended meaning and complete the parallel structure (or fail to...). For that reason, I think this question would be at home on the current test.