It's to bring in cheap meat. Back in August, there was a group that worked with both 7 and 14. They had a new hire starting the day before the layoffs, so the whole team thought they were safe. Hell, why bring in someone new if you are going to dump people. Well, turns out 3 people in that group got let go, 2 of them were level 8 and 1 was a low performer who wasn't let go in June. Mr. H1B Jones new hire is lower level and needs to be an indentured servant to the great GF, so he's cheap. This is likely a recurring pattern across the company to get costs down. There was a slogan that we used at my place before GF (and probably stolen from somewhere else): "We will save money AT ANY COST."
Managers get a bonus for cutting costs, get a golden parachute when they leave and the next company sees how indifferent they are to cutting people so they get hired somewhere else.