[danaris]

Your logic is somewhat fallacious: specifically, you create a false dichotomy between "there is an illegal sector-wide conspiracy" and "these things could happen across the sector if there were fully legitimate reasons for them to".

You are missing the middle, which is that there is no conspiracy, but that many companies in the sector saw, at around the same time (though possibly influenced by some bellwether I'm unaware of), the opportunity to juice their stock prices with layoffs even though they're making record profits and don't actually expect to be hit by a looming recession.