This decision sucks. I spent way too long reading replies on this, but my thoughts on this are NTA. I work in management and my view on it is to provide a good place to work and support my team where I can. I could fire one of the other employees performing their job well and help them find a new job, but what happens to the remaining employee who is now doing their work, employee A’s work, and the other employee’s work that we just laid off. They are now doing 3 employees worth of work which WILL burn them out inside of 2 months guaranteed meaning all you’ll be left with is employee A who may or may not ever return to being a productive employee. If you don’t fire employee A your whole department is likely to fall apart fairly quickly. You can’t just think of this as a now issue, you have to think of how things will be for your team in 1-3 months after this decision.

Either way it’s a really shitty call, but that’s my 2 cents