>"Given that the company is facing hard times, we looked at performance and pay of everyone at the company and kept the people we felt were the highest performe

>"Given that the company is facing hard times, we looked at performance and pay of everyone at the company and kept the people we felt were the highest performers at the least cost." Hm. So the information you want is that it wasn't random or based on seniority. It was performance based, even though your performance wasn't low enough to get you fired outside of a layoff.