In a recession, a decrease in consumer spending causes many businesses to lay off workers or even to close.
Statements
We're reading for Conditional, Causal, Mathematical, or Pivot wording, and we see a lot of Causal wording here. We might want to be assembling a Causal Chain
In a recession less consumer spending (causes) many businesses lay off or close down workers can't find new job (resulting in) increased number of jobless people
Meanwhile, what gets us out of the recession?
more consumer spending expanded business activity (creates) new need for more workers recovery from recession has begun
Finally, in the last sentence, we have a pivot, But.
Most Supported paragraphs frequently provide correct answers that Reconcile the Pivot; i.e. the correct answer safely synthesizes the tension the Pivot idea creates with what came before.
We learn that businesses usually are too scared of a post-recession economy and delay hiring additional workers as long as possible.
Evaluate
How does this last idea combine with what else we were told? It seems like as we're trying to get out of a recession, we might start spending money, creating more business activity, and creating the potential need to hire new workers, but businesspeople will drag their feet doing so, wanting to make sure they can be confident enough in the economy to invest in hiring new workers.
Goal
Look for an answer that rewards us for understanding any subset of those Causal Chains, or an answer that gives us a safely worded synthesis of the last idea with the previous sentence about recovery from a recession.