Interest rates were low, which made banks lend money very cheaply. It also led to a lot of money being put in the stock market, which made it go up.

Companies used that money to, in part, hire people. A lot of people. The stock market doing well also means businesses try to grow, because everyone is spending more money.

Interest rates are starting to come back up. This means loans are more expensive, which means there’s less cash available. It also means there’s less money in the stock market.

Less cash on hand and lower stock value makes businesses want to cut costs, and people are very expensive, particularly in the tech sector.

Additionally, commercial real estate is running into major problems: people don’t want or need to work in offices.
This means the contracts are being allowed to expire, and less money for the large companies that own the properties.

A lot of money is invested in these companies. Anticipation of them doing badly makes companies fear an economic downturn.

So with less money available, less tolerance for risk in the stock market, and a fear of a significant economic upset, companies are looking to cut expenses, and people hired because cash was cheap and risk was okay are easy to justify cutting.

They ideally would like to let go of people they can do without, keep their stock price high, and when the market bottoms out spend the cash they can justify with their high price to buy viable companies at a discount.