Single correct option
The paragraph below is missing a sentence. From the options, choose the sentence that fits most logically into the blank marked [BLANK].
Remote work was widely predicted to flatten the wage gap between employees in expensive coastal cities and those in cheaper inland towns, since location would supposedly stop mattering once work moved online. [BLANK] Employers, it turns out, have been willing to pay coastal-level salaries mainly to workers who could plausibly have taken a coastal job in the first place, which has preserved much of the geographic premium the shift to remote work was expected to erase.
Remote work was widely predicted to flatten the wage gap between employees in expensive coastal cities and those in cheaper inland towns, since location would supposedly stop mattering once work moved online. [BLANK] Employers, it turns out, have been willing to pay coastal-level salaries mainly to workers who could plausibly have taken a coastal job in the first place, which has preserved much of the geographic premium the shift to remote work was expected to erase.
- A. The evidence so far suggests a more modest and uneven effect: some wage convergence has occurred, but it is concentrated among highly specialized roles where employers compete nationally regardless of where the employee lives.
- B. This prediction was made by several prominent economists writing in the early 2020s.
- C. Coastal cities remain more expensive than inland towns primarily because of housing supply constraints.
- D. Remote work has also changed commuting patterns and office real estate demand in major cities.
Show answer and solution
Answer: (A) The evidence so far suggests a more modest and uneven effect: some wage convergence has occurred, but it is concentrated among highly specialized roles where employers compete nationally regardless of where the employee lives.
The sentence after the blank begins with 'Employers, it turns out,' which requires the blank to have already introduced the idea that the prediction did not fully pan out ('turns out' signals a qualification of what came before). Option 1 supplies exactly this — a modest, uneven effect — and specifically sets up 'highly specialized roles' as the context the next sentence continues. Options 2, 3 and 4 introduce unrelated details that do not connect to the sentence that follows.
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