Exactly the point - passive, weak, blameless terms makes it nebulous on what has happened. Just say you want you need to say - you're the captain of the ship.

Oh c'mon, there's no way this is it. If they hadn't been laid off there wouldn't be an external announcement. You don't post something like this merely to announce that you're retraining some employees.

They were 100% laid off. The wording is intentional and standard for the industry.

You aren't "impacted" by changing roles or retraining, you're impacted by losing your job.

"we want to acknowledge and express our appreciation for their substantial contributions" translates to "these people will no longer be contributing as they are laid off effective immediately".

It is important to keep in mind that the companies are the ones doing the impacting. They don't have to lay people off, they're choosing to.

They wouldn't announce it if that were the case. I am curious whether it would have been announced at all without all the heightened economic fear.