I'm not familiar with the layoffs you're alluding to, but the general trend everywhere was that everyone started up lots of speculative projects using borrowed funds when interest rates were low...if you can borrow money at 1% interest, you only need to make a 1% profit to break even. Then when interest rates go up and you suddenly need to be making a 7% return, you suddenly have a lot of projects that are losing money which then get cut.