My reasoning is that, from a purely financial perspective, individuals would probably prefer to be made redundant in a good economic situation than a poor one. However, many companies continue projects that are unprofitable while the economy and their business is doing well, only to make massive lay-offs when times are more difficult or even collapse entirely, flooding the job market. Thus, my intuition is that smaller but more frequent lay-offs would smooth-out the troughs and peaks of an industry's job market to make it more closely resemble the value of that industry as a whole.

I would be very curious to know what I'm missing in this picture; would you have the time to elaborate?

> from a purely financial perspective, individuals would probably prefer to be made redundant in a good economic situation than a poor one.

Oh, OK. I agree with that. I thought that you were saying that being laid off is a good thing when economic times are good. I think that it's never a good thing.

However, if it has to happen, it's certainly better when times are good than when they aren't.

> Thus, my intuition is that smaller but more frequent lay-offs would smooth-out the troughs and peaks

I suppose, but I would not want to work for a company that engages in regular layoffs, even small ones. It means that you can never really settle in to the job.

I've turned down several job offers from companies solely because they engage in regularly-scheduled layoffs.