Paying workers you don't need and don't help your bottom line is fundamentally broken.

They aren't running a charity for jobs program.

Maybe the jerks that hired, and subsequently fired, those workers should be fired first?

A point as banal as it is unhelpful. Perhaps if companies didn’t act like charities during good times by promising workers lavish compensation and security, entangling in more workers than necessary, and then pulling the rug from under them during bad times, then this false expectation would have never arisen.