what does "to be set to rise" mean?
The sentence was copied from VOA as follows:

"We see that unemployment is set to rise again. Our projection would be for 5.1 million more in 2013 and still a further 3 million in 2014.

Does anyone know what "to be set to rise" means? and why don't we just skip it and say e.g. "We see that unemployment is rising again."?

Question

what does "to be set to rise" mean?
The sentence was copied from VOA as follows:

"We see that unemployment is set to rise again.  Our projection would be for 5.1 million more in 2013 and still a further 3 million in 2014.

Does anyone know what "to be set to rise" means? and why don't we just skip it and say e.g. "We see that unemployment is rising again."?

Answer

"Set to rise' means that in the future something is expected to rise. The text is talking about a projection for 2013 and 2014. Another example could be, "Tomorrow the river IS SET TO RISE to 6 meters when the flood reaches it's peak'.

"We see that unemployment is rising again' is present tense. For example, "The statistics for 2012 have just been released and we see that unemployment is rising again'.

Answer

Bretto's answer is great. Just to be clear, "unemployment is rising" and "unemployment is set to rise" do NOT mean the same thing. "is rising" obviously means that it is rising right now, but "is set to rise" means that it probably will rise soon, but is not rising right now.

Answers · 2

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