It's even worse when consider how much their markets have grown in the past year. A 6% decline in revenue is understandable if the target markets go down 6%, but when there's growth it's even worse.

Because if they lay off all those people, they might make even more profit. A public company with outside shareholders can't generally say "oh, we're making enough money, we'll leave it there" - it's got to constantly grow and constantly make more and more profit to please the shareholders which expect it to do so.

If you care about your employees, you don't let random people have a say in how your company is run for their own profit.

Why not? Don't you spend less on things when you want to save more? Do you spend all of your savings?