Passage Summary: Even though big companies were firing people and merging like crazy in the 80s and 90s, workers felt just as safe in their jobs at the end of that decade as they did at the beginning.

Reasoning: Corporate instability and downsizing increased significantly between 1984 and 1994, yet survey data shows that the percentage of employees who felt their jobs were secure remained nearly identical.

Analysis: The paradox here is the disconnect between objective reality—increased corporate volatility—and subjective perception—stable feelings of job security. We are looking for an explanation for why employees didn't feel the heat despite the 'rocky' corporate environment. Since this is an 'EXCEPT' question, four choices will resolve this tension, perhaps by suggesting the downsizing only hit a small niche or that the 1984 baseline was already unusually low. Look for the one answer that either makes the discrepancy worse or is completely irrelevant to employee sentiment.