If the only people who can afford your product is your employees, you won't stay in business very long
If your employees aren't employed, who is spending the money that keeps other employees employed? Sooner or later, the interchange breaks down.
Wealth is created by extracting raw materials, refining them, converting them to a usable form, and selling them. People make money along the way performing those acts, others make money providing services to the ones who do the extraction, etc.
If wealth is created without anyone making money, or very few, then those who can afford services will be few, those who can afford the products will be few, and the economy won't grow, it will contract.
The old example in the patch is the oil company that got rid of stripper wells, just too expensive for the amount of production. Then they got rid of all those wells only making 50 bbls of oil a day, because they were the most expensive. Then they got rid of the 100 bbl/day wells, just not cost effective enough, etc. until they achieved the ultimate savings.
But they no longer produced oil.
There is a point where cutting workforce cuts the economy's throat.