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Yeah, the evidence comes from payroll. If you lay off a bunch of people, don't hire replacements, and don't take on more contractors payroll expense will go down. What's to doubt?

There are industries built around project based hiring, do the work, lay off the team. They don't tend to have lingering costs from payroll after the project is done.

Is your real question, can cost cutting fix a business? The answer is sometimes. But if nothing else, cost cutting can sometimes keep a business afloat for longeer. Depends on the company. Cutting costs usually also results in losing revenue, if you can cut more costs than revenue, that's a win; if you lose more revenue than costs, it's not helpful. There's also often a lot of one time costs during layoffs, and those costs are unlike to provide any revenue.