Insofar as there is a cultural element, I'd say companies used to take more risk on average, at least at the individual worker level. My sense is having an ext

Insofar as there is a cultural element, I'd say companies used to take more risk on average, at least at the individual worker level. My sense is having an extra pair of hands to help used to be seen as an opportunity, now every single pair of hands must have a concrete, justified purpose before they even get an interview. Bean-counting and cost cutting has always been present in business, but, likely due to the rise of modern computing and metrics/data gathering capabilities, it seems to have been taken to an unproductive extreme. Of course that's only the social component. Globalization and the hollowing out of labor unions (at least in the US) have also certainly contributed.