Fired, laid off, and furloughed are very, very different things, both strictly legally and in terms of general business “morals” or norms.
“Firing” is for cause: You’re a screw-up unable or unwilling to perform the job adequately. Any sensible business makes adequate documentation to defend themselves from lawsuit. Obviously a Mom & Pop diner firing a teen dishwasher for repeated no-shows is going to have less of a need for a paper trail than did, say, Murdoch over firing Robert Ailes after umptten years at the top.
“Furlough” is about being released because they need less total people in your area of expertise. And it contains the expectation that as needs increase, you’ll be asked back and if you come back, will pick up right where you left off career-wise. This is common in industries with strong seasonality or which are prone to boom and bust with the economic cycle. It’s also more common with larger corps vice SMBs, and more common with union than non-union shops.
“Layoff” is about being released because they need less total people in your area of expertise. And it contains NO expectation that as needs increase, you’ll be asked back.
Somehow IT got into the idea that projects are unique, and each project needs a fresh set of employees. With the degree of specific tech knowledge required it became easier to say “the project that’s ending is all in C on Unix; the project beginning is a web app in Python on Windows. So of course we need all new skills and therefore all new people.”
My recollection of the beginning of this trend in IT was as minis were storming the bastions of mainframe shops. The new machines got new workers. The old workers stayed on the old machines.
Then as the old machines were retired, they discovered they could jettison a 20 year employee with a pension and a long vacation plus separate sick leave days for a 5-year employee with a no-match 401K and a short set of personal days to split between vacation and sick leave. Ka-Ching!!!
The rest is history.
Bottom line: firing for cause is everywhere. Treating full-time potentially long-term employees as temps is spreading rapidly. But really got started, at least in the white collar world, in the IT community of the 1990s. So they’re farthest ahead on adopting this not-so-new fashion.