The assumption that the companies doing layoffs "need" to do layoffs isn't necessarily well founded. Really we should be comparing companies in comparable fina

The assumption that the companies doing layoffs "need" to do layoffs isn't necessarily well founded. Really we should be comparing companies in comparable financial situations - with one group doing layoffs and the other not. For public companies, we could probably reasonably set up this comparison, but for private companies we don't have the data.