Not long ago, layoff announcements totaling 10,000 workers or more seemed to arrive every week. These days, they’ve become a rarity — except at a few troubled giants that still haven’t recovered from the recession that began at the end of 2007.

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) just announced layoffs of as many as 16,000 workers worldwide. That’s in addition to another 34,000 workers the lumbering tech company plans to axe as part of a long-term restructuring plan. HP’s revenue and profitability have been shrinking since 2011 due to an overreliance on fading technologies such as PCs, laptops and printers. Though the stock has risen during the past 12 months, it’s roughly where it was five years ago — while the S&P 500, by contrast, has risen by 114%.

In a Friday appearance on CNBC, HP CEO Meg Whitman made the case for why these layoffs were a positive thing for the company and its customers. Shareholders seemed fine with the news as well, lifting HP stock more than 6% in Friday's session. Layoffs usually mean lower labor costs, which is why they often boost a company's shares, at least in the short term.

There aren’t many companies these days stuck in HP’s situation, however. Many big firms used the 2007-2009 recession to aggressively downsize and realign their businesses, if necessary. That’s one reason corporate profits — which hit an annualized rate of $1.9 trillion in the first quarter of this year — have soared to record levels.

A thinner labor force is obviously hard on workers. It holds back the overall economy, too, since fewer people earning a paycheck means less money spent. Weak hiring in the aftermath of widespread layoffs has left the economy about 131,000 jobs short of the peak employment level from early 2008, with the unemployment rate at an elevated 6.3%.

There’s an upside, however: Mass layoffs have almost become a thing of the past. So far this year, the number of layoffs announced by companies has averaged just 40,000 per month, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That’s the lowest pace of layoffs since 1997, which was a boom year for the economy. The last time there was a layoff comparable to HP’s latest announcement (other than from HP) was 14 months ago, when J.C. Penney (JCP) said it would cut 19,000 jobs.

So far this year, the HP announcement is the only mass layoff that could affect 15,000 jobs or more. There were two layoff announcements of that magnitude last year, two in 2012 and one in 2011, according to Challenger, Gray data. Compare that with some of the eye-popping job cuts that occurred during the recession, when companies made aggressive moves that might have been far more controversial in a stable economy. Here are just a few of the bloodlettings that occurred in late 2008 and early 2009: