But it does matter for people who are employed and looking for jobs. If you are unhappy and/or underpaid at your current job, layoffs all caused by larger market forces might be interpreted as a hint that you should think about staying at a "safe" job unless you really hate it. However, if some significant portion of the the layoffs is due to recent over-hiring and that has now swung the other way into layoffs, changing jobs might be less risky.