http://www.newsweek.com/id/233131/page/1
If you are going to read business, look at a business publication. Newsweek is absolute garbage. It is nothing but fluff. And it is why the paper is in steep, steep decline. Like a stubborn journalist, instead of changing their ways as their publication enters decline, they double down on it. In other words, there has been less ‘news’ and more and more editorializing. What you linked to me was actually an editorial, not a news story. And it was a poor editorial at that.
The comparisons in the piece are laughable. Comparing a disruptive company like Southwest Airlines to the other airline companies? That is like comparing Nintendo to EA and Take 2. Sure, they are all video game companies, but they are nothing alike.
The real question is not the lay offs but the hiring freezes going on throughout businesses everywhere. If you ask the decision makers why they are freezing on hiring, you will get the same answer again and again.
Businesses do not live in the present. They live in the future. They must invest and figure out how to pay for the next four years, the next ten years, and the next twenty years.
An extremely important part of the financial side is the legal side. When laws change, so does the financial landscape. What might have been the rules a year ago may be something very different. So businesses adjust.
Imagine you are playing Monopoly. And then comes some kid who takes the back of the box (that has the rules), and begins to write brand new rules! Suddenly, Boardwalk has the value of Madison Avenue. The prices of red hotels change. Chance cards become altered. In this situation, what would the player do? The player would sit it out waiting for the kid to be done with the changes and so the player can understand the new rules of the game.
Businesses like stability. When there is legal chaos going on, as there is now in America, businesses will just sit it out and go on a hiring freeze. If a business has no idea what the legal landscape will be in a few years, they will just wait it out. This is why you don’t see businesses want to adventure to nations with unstable governments.
Until the legal environment becomes stable, businesses won’t start hiring.