She emailed them to see if she was affected by this and they replied that she was not.
Of course she's not affected. Companies do this all the time. They lay off a senior engineer with 15+ years of experience, (and the paycheck to go with it,) and with that same money can hire three or four new grads.
that’s a simplistic way to generalize
you don’t fire experienced staff that way. You need them to train the new staff.