I think calling them cockups is a stretch. A few points:
- Flexibility of the US labor market is one of the things that makes it attractive relative to labor markets of other rich countries: it's easy to hire more people when demand goes up, and fire them when it goes down.
- Demand just went down, all over the interwebs, since people miss doing things in real life.
- It's an easy time to fire a bunch of people without making your company look bad. I suspect some knock-on layoffs are CEOs taking advantage of the ability to clean house while everyone else is doing it.
- Flexibility of the US labor market is one of the things that makes it attractive relative to labor markets of other rich countries: it's easy to hire more people when demand goes up, and fire them when it goes down.
- Demand just went down, all over the interwebs, since people miss doing things in real life.
- It's an easy time to fire a bunch of people without making your company look bad. I suspect some knock-on layoffs are CEOs taking advantage of the ability to clean house while everyone else is doing it.