Don't forget their statement two days ago :



Quote At this point, we are highly confident of being able to land successfully (...) and refly the rocket with no required refurbishment.

They seem to be very confident, so maybe the reason is they know they won't have to build dozens of cores per year as they planned to (Shotwell once said 40). That would explain the layoffs.



Shotwell just stated this year that they plan to get to 40 cores per year production by the end of this year, and they obviously would have already factored in potential reusability.Keep in mind also for reusability that Shotwell also stated that customers could choose between expendable and reusable launchers, and that they launch market is somewhat conservative. Add in that Musk said they won't be re-flying any stages until next year, and that all the customers signed up through that point are on expendable launchers, and that means that they still need the ability to build lots of cores in their factory.As to this rumor, until there is some validation I would take it with a grain of salt...