Is Intel meant to be a jobs program? Should they just hire and retain people they don’t need…just to keep them employed? Should they hire me to twiddle my thumbs for $100k a year just because they can afford to?
Assuming output is the same in both cases, this is wrong. If a company is making $10 million in profits, is it better for society if they spend $9 million hiring people to dig ditches and then fill them in? No, because those people could be doing something else that is actually useful.
It's good locally, yes, but our current economic system does not have adequate systems to support people who are laid off into other work. Layoffs will result in significant hardship. Also, it's good for a company to have a degree of slack.
Increasing productivity is a good thing actually.