Assuming of course that you live in the US. In the UK it's relatively difficult to get rid of people - sacking is very difficult and likely to end up in court (you need a bulletproof reason for doing it) and the redundancy process is quite complex (with guaranteed payments if you've been there more than 2 years, etc).

Looks like the blog article was written by an Australian - their level of job security falls somewhere between the UK and the US.

EDIT: Also, I believe, in the UK you can't make permanent staff redundant if you've got temporary staff - so the contractors are first out of the door.