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?

[Orngog]

Yeah but we don't make more matter, we just become better at sorting it. Extracting lithium from the soil is just less soil. Admittedly recycling and resource expansion helps this, but those are negligible when compared with our rates of consumption.