I've been on the 'lucky' side of many layoffs. It is always good to remember that the responsibility of a corporation is to shareholders, not employees.
Yes, but it is not quite so clean. Employers are humans and in my experience they care far more about the people they know (employees) than abstract people (shareholders).
(This is just my opinion; and I have never been personally laid off -- the quotes in my first message are more about the fact that I actually might have been better off if I was...)
Your manager is likely to care (not always in my observations), but there can be various reasons for that (affected deliverables (compensation); bad experience of delivering the news, etc.). His manager may care. Next level manager is much less likely to care, and so on. And the decisions are usually made on the level where I doubt people care much. People on that level may not like that they have to lay off people and have some sympathy for those affected, but they will lay them off as soon as they think it is necessary for one reason or another. It's their job to keep _the company_ going, not to keep _you_ employed.