My last company had a couple rounds of layoffs last year (including me eventually), everyone in the executive leadership kept referring to it in such a roundabout way. They'd always call it, "the reorg" and the people laid off were people, "impacted" by it.

So you had to fire a bunch of people for no fault of their own. I get it, that's business sometimes when the times aren't good. But just say it. I do believe our CEO is genuinely a good person and did not feel good about doing it, so maybe there's a component of protecting one's own emotions in there as well by speaking around it.