No idea if it's true, but in my mental model, remote work plays into this as well. Pre-covid, large companies were restricted to hiring the talent in their area

No idea if it's true, but in my mental model, remote work plays into this as well. Pre-covid, large companies were restricted to hiring the talent in their area. If there weren't enough talented people near the company, they would often end up hiring people who were under qualified, just to fill seats. Remote work made the talent pool bigger which means more qualified candidates. These layoffs are allowing large companies to lay off some of those under qualified local hires.