Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, we use the terms the same way in the US, just the protections behind them are weaker (and personally, as an employee, I'm fine with it that way). You might be thinking of the phrase "was let go", which is just a nicer way of saying "got fired". "Laid off" here means the same as in the UK: you were sent home because your job function isn't needed anymore, or because the company is downsizing.
> and personally, as an employee, I'm fine with it that way You mean as a reasonably well-off employee who was lucky enough to have picked a growing field when you went to uni. On the other hand, if that field ever stops growing for any reason... you might see why people enjoy stability and the ability to plan ahead in their work life.
Actually I picked a dying field at uni. Well, not a dying one, but it's become very difficult over the past 10-15 years to find a job doing digital hardware design. Fortunately I gave up on that quickly and switched to software (something I was lucky enough to start picking up well before uni).
But I think that misses the point. We shouldn't halt progress in the name of job security. I'm fine with slowing progress a little; hell, even in the US it's customary (even though not required by law) to pay a decent severance package during layoffs. But I just don't get this whole idea that you're entitled to a job (and job security) just because you trained for it.
I also don't get the resistance toward retraining, aside from the obvious issue that retraining takes time and money, and in the meantime you have to feed and shelter yourself (but this sort of thing can and should be solved via social safety nets). Sure it would be easy to be able to have a single job for the rest of your life, but that's just not how life works, or should work. Things get obsoleted all the time, and that doesn't mean we should legally require private enterprises to keep paying someone to do useless work.
I do very much object to how difficult it can be to vanilla fire someone in many places in Europe. They've gone way too far with that one. Extra protections for layoffs are fine, but if someone is consistently underperforming, it should be possible to get rid of them immediately and without any sort of severance. I've been at a couple very small companies in the US where the lack of ability to do that sort of thing could have killed the company.