Meaning of "once again"

Test No. [color=blue]incompl/advan-45 “At the Office (1)”, question 4

Once again the company has had to make a in the number of office staff to try and recoup their losses.

(a) reducing
(b) reduction
(c) reduce
(d) reduces

Test No. [color=blue]incompl/advan-45 “At the Office (1)”, answer 4

Once again the company has had to make a reduction in the number of office staff to try and recoup their losses.

Correct answer: (b) reduction

Hi! Help me understand the expression, please: ‘once again’
thanks
Logician

Once again the company has had to make a reduction in the number of office staff to try and recoup their losses.

This means the company had experienced such a situation before.[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, photographs: A basket maker[YSaerTTEW443543]

Hi.Torsten, thank you.
Logician

has had to make…? What does it mean?

if so, it must then be the company has experienced…not had experienced.

“Has had to” is the present perfect form of “have to”. The test sentence presents the news about reductions as something that happened in the recent past. In the sentence, the recently made reductions have some sort of direct relevance to or impact on the present.

I presume your comment in this case is related to the sentence Torsten wrote. Yes, he could have written “has experienced” in order to explain the test sentence. That would have kept things in the same “recent past” perspective as the test sentence itself.

However, because Torsten’s focus was on explaining the meaning of “once again”, it is also reasonable to use the simple past or the past perfect in the explanation:

  • This means the company had (already) experienced such a situation before they had the experience mentioned in the test sentence.

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