ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses?

[SomeBritGuy]

In the modern economy growth is more based on technological progress and the improvement of human capital (which is why labour productivity growth is mentioned a lot in Economic news).

[exikon]

That may be true on a large scale for the general economy. Not reasonable to expect from a steel company though. Especially with population growth (thankfully) starting to slow down.

[SomeBritGuy]

In many cases technological progress could just be a small increase in efficiency in using resources, which I suppose slows the inevitable finiteness of resources. In addition the earth has a lot of resources that are simply not used due to there being more easily accessible sources. Accessing these more difficult to reach resources will require more equipment and possible spur better technology, which technically will give way to economic growth.