> So what is the difference between “the company did layoffs of its lowest performers due to financial pressure caused in part by the pandemic” and “the company did layoffs of its lowest performers using the pandemic as an excuse to avoid bad PR”?
This is a confusing question, seems the answer seems embedded in the question...the former signals that there's "financial pressure" on the company over and above the reasonable baseline that every company faces, while the latter doesn't. A 100% financially healthy and secure company may choose to pay the ongoing cost of restructuring during good economic times, since layoffs in good times may have PR costs (for recruitment, for example) that outweigh the carrying costs of the low performers (or unbalanced departments, or whatever). If a downturn lowers this cost, then you'd expect companies to take advantage of it.
This is a confusing question, seems the answer seems embedded in the question...the former signals that there's "financial pressure" on the company over and above the reasonable baseline that every company faces, while the latter doesn't. A 100% financially healthy and secure company may choose to pay the ongoing cost of restructuring during good economic times, since layoffs in good times may have PR costs (for recruitment, for example) that outweigh the carrying costs of the low performers (or unbalanced departments, or whatever). If a downturn lowers this cost, then you'd expect companies to take advantage of it.