"I don't know how it is in most countries, but in the United States, an employee gets unemployment when they get laid off."

Thats assuming they were officially laid off, not let go for performance reasons even though it was actually company downsizing, and are eligible to collect unemployment. Since companies usually have to cover some of the unemployment payments they will fight unemployment claims or even fire a employee for a BS reason. So unemployment is far from guaranteed. IIRC IBM recently used those tactics in their latest mass layoff.