In a recent year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median number of years that wage and salary employees had been with their current employer (called employee tenure) was 4.1 years. Information on employee tenure has been gathered since 1996 using the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of about 60,000 households that provides information on employment, unemployment, earnings, demographics, and other characteristics of the U.S. population ages 16 and over. With respect to employee tenure, the questions measure how long employees have been with their current employers, not how long they plan to stay with their employers.
A congressional representative claims that the median tenure for employees from the representative’s district is less than the national median tenure of 4.1 years. The claim is based on the representative’s data, which is shown in the table at the right above. (Assume that the employees were randomly selected.)
c. State the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis.