> A year or two later, and they'll freely agree that being laid off was good for them.

It strikes me as dangerous to conclude too much from this. In fact, I worry that this particular sort of statistic could be completely meaningless. People often try to find positive interpretations of events which are too painful for them to accept. It's a very powerful form of cognitive dissonance. Being fired from a job you enjoy can be a nearly traumatic hit to your perception of yourself, and it is necessary to reconstruct your self-image in some way. Most likely the person will exercise some creative freedom in this reconstruction process.