Just spitballin' here, but it seems to be that a lot of it comes down to the terrible incentive programs in place at the most successful companies. First of all, the shareholder is not always right and short term self interest does not make for long term good decision making.

So, if the people at each level are basically just angling for their own short term self interest, be it a promotion or a raise/bonus/performance incentive, they will do what they must to hit whatever those incentives are, even if they harm the long term health of the business.

In short, instead of investing profits, companies are scaling back to look good and hit their profitability or stock price targets. It's short sighted and will end up hurting a lot of companies in the middle to long term because they are inevitably cutting plenty of good people along with those who are less good at what they do.

I really don't think that the goal of business should be to hire a ton of people for the sake of hiring people. A business exists to make a profit, but sustaining profitability requires great people, great operations, great products, great sales/marketing, and great service. When a company stops investing in those things, they get worse. When entire industries/countries do this, it doesn't take long for some upstart to take the lead.