> Again, tell that to the recruiters. You're seeing it among peers, but there's a lot of stigma that if you got laid off you must have been "one of the bad ones". It's absolutely not true, but with so much fascination on "why did you leave your job" you can see how people really feel.

Yeah, I agree with you that this is mostly on the risk-aversion of recruiters. There seems to have been this vicious cycle of firing being harder and more stigmatized combined with companies being more picky when they hire. Nobody really benefits from this, though.