As layoffs have swept across the globe in the past year, thousands who considered themselvesrelatively secure in their positions have found themselves out of work. In tech, for instance,companies cut more than 150,000 workers in 2022； in the first quarter of 2023, they’ve trimmedalmost 76,000 more roles. In the finance industry, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigrouphave slashed thousands of positions. Many other industries have also been impacted by redundancies:cuts have extended into consumer retail, media, healthcare and pharmaceutical spaces.
        Historically, layoffs have been part of the natural cycles of a necessarily ebbing and flowingeconomy. Yet experts say this wave is notable for several reasons. The first: their scope and scale,especially in light of the fact that the underlying economic fundamentals are showing improvement.During the global Great Recession, hundreds of thousands of jobs were cut as a direct reaction to amassive slump in the value of assets around the globe, upending livelihoods and wiping trillions ofdollars off the value of international stock markets for a sustained period. However, that’s not the casenow, even as layoffs and job insecurity proliferate.
        In the US, for instance, the 2008 financial crisis and following recession saw theunemployment rate peak at 10%, with some 15 million people registered as unemployed due to asystemic and protracted slowdown in economic activity. Today, the unemployment rate is around 3.5%. During the 2011 eurozone crisis, unemployment in the European Union surpassed 11.5%,compared to a current rate of below 6.5%.
        A second reason why the redundancies are noteworthy is because of the current atmosphere ofthe workplace itself. During the pandemic, managers championed an employee-centric style ofleadership that prioritized personal wellbeing and mental health, explains Anna Tavis, a professor ofhuman capital management at New York University. ‟We were encouraged to bring our whole selvesto work,” she says. As a result, many workers are feeling a sense of cognitive dissonance – both thoselaid off, and others who live in fear of being axed in the future. Tavis explains that during Covid-19,they were told one thing, but now they’re experiencing something that discredits that narrative. ‟It’smaking leadership seem inauthentic, and that’s understandably having an impact on employee trust inleadership,” she says.
        Some experts warn that if waves of layoffs like the ones we’ve recently seen – or even just thelooming possibility of such cuts – continue to be part of working life, organizational cultures couldalso deteriorate, having a grim ripple effect on everything from employee engagement andproductivity, to physical and mental health. What’s worse, these conditions could touch generationsto come.
【題組】45. What are the examples of industries that have experienced significant layoffs in recent times,as stated in the passage？
(A) Manufacturing and production
(B) Hospitality and tourism
(C) Technology and finance
(D) Education and academia