I was on L1 (with Canadian PR, so it wasn't totally critical for me) during 2010 or so layoffs/firings, and I've heard rumors that they were trying to spare H1s/L1s because it's a giant pain to get fired as one. I don't think it's related to paycheck; after being encouraged to relocate from Canada (on PR i.e. not dependent on the job) to the US (on L1 i.e. worse than H1) my paycheck went up a bunch for the same job.