I'm wondering how many of the commenters on these threads have been around for long enough to experience pervious layoff events? The reality is that any company has 5-10% staff that aren't really doing anything useful, and can be fired without significant impact to business operations. So it's more that companies don't just fire those people every year because normally various kinds of negative blowback would ensue. The reason we're seeing layoffs now is basically that the conditions are such that said blowback is reduced. In other words: it's in fashion (in Elite circles) and they can get away with it.

Of course often the appropriate 5-10% aren't actually the target of layoffs, but that's an orthogonal problem.