The credibility of tech's official layoff narrative has not eroded gradually — it has collapsed at the point where employer documentation and executive statements diverge most visibly. A quarter of March layoffs were attributed to AI in employer-provided reasons [10], arriving in the same weeks that company announcements framed cuts as efficiency measures, portfolio realignment, or the tail end of pandemic-era overhiring. The legal and regulatory paper trail companies generate when laying off workers is now the primary evidence against their own communications strategy.