* First step was laying off people without jobs which could be done remotely.
* Second step is laying off people who could still be productive from home, but where there's less demand.
Unless we act with boldness and resoluteness, this will just continue to feed in on itself as the nation collapses.
I understand it's a shitty thing to do, but at the end of the day your health/sanity is more important than some companies. If you have a good manager/coworkers you can even get them to bat for you to stay, as a remote worker.
Give https://github.com/yanirs/established-remote and https://github.com/remoteintech/remote-jobs a look.
That's anecdotal data among companies and colleagues I interact with, but there's enough of it that it's compelling to me.
If you lived in North Korea, and in six months, you had a few friends die of COVID, while the government told you things were under control, you'd have no data or statistics, but you'd know there's something up.
That said, we do have data, but not broken out in that way. Best we have for data are unemployment claims.
And not all of the behavior is rational. Investing during downturns is much cheaper than during upturns. A year ago, top ML people cost north of a megabuck a year. Inflation reduces labor costs further. Companies who up investment now are likely to come out of the crisis stronger than ones who cut back, assuming money is available (either as loans or savings). But it seems to be a reality.