I don't think it's quite so black-and-white. Often there are multiple such positions and they are being reduced. So your position still exists and they don't want you (or rather, they would prefer to have X number of your coworkers rather than you). I don't think it's synonymous with being fired, but you can smell it from there.
Every time I'm seen a layoff in tech it is always the lower performing employees first out the door. Round 1 is normally just letting people go who should have been fired years before.
Of course this is often when the good employees start doing interviews as well.
The first round of cuts (of deadweight that avoided egregious screwups) work so well that managers get addicted and pretty soon they're cutting the actual workers and they kill the company.
