Your analysis is incomplete.

Some of the ways to achieve goal X are via layoffs, some aren't. You cut some possible routes to X, but you add more routes.

Not all routes are equal. Cutting a particular employee might mean that a vital convergent point is no longer possible to enter, meaning all routes now lead to failure.

Some of the optimal routes to X may require that management get paid a fair wage (rather than 40+ times the median), and that they reconfigure the company to enable them to keep all employees - everyone gets hours cut by half-a-day, say.

TL;DR - in short you're committing petitio principii, assuming the best way is layoffs, and thus concluding the best way can't be taken without layoffs.