Why don’t companies choose to not grow during “economic turmoil”

The layoffs I see happening in large companies is said to be due to “harsh economic conditions “. On reading further into it, it’s because they estimate their growth to be slower than before, not no-growth. Yet they take that as an indication to fire thousands of workers. Citing an oncoming term of economic turmoil with an unknown length as a reason doesn’t make sense to me. Besides the obvious reason of corporate greed and lack of human compassion, what else drives companies to these layoffs?