It's an interesting question as to whether something has changed to make being laid off not a bad thing any more - perhaps increased flexibility and liquidity in the labor market from, say, internet job ads, has made this much less of a problem than it used to be.
Keep in mind that "laid off" != "losing your primary source of income". A person's primary source of income is, let's say, working as a software developer. If you're laid off, you can still work as a software developer, you just need to spend a little time finding somewhere else to do that. In this way, it's quite different from losing your primary source of income due to, say, ill health.
Even if you don't find somewhere else to work, as get all the time that you were previously selling to your employer back to use as you see fit, so in accounting terms it's a wash, rather than a loss.
