I suspect the manager(s) know what's going on.
There are times I would go on a tear writing code, and after a couple of hours of high intensity effort I would burn out. At that point I would pull up a news site to do a search on some topic to get my mind off the code and let my brain recharge. I would also take a break, make some tea, perhaps chat with coworkers, or in some context 'do something else' for awhile. However, I might do something like this for five or ten minutes, and then get back into the code.
If the person 'goofing off' is really good in some niche (SQL Server stored procedures or ETL or something) (s)he might be worth the salary to the employer, although perhaps not in the context of the impact on morale. However, I have also seen (and I have to admit, there were times I did this myself) people waste large parts of their day. The one situation where I was guilty of this I was bored to death, after a year I quit and went contract, and have worked fewer hours but more intensely in each hour. This is the likely fate of this individual.
In the US, larger employers have a tendency to do layoffs during some business downturn, so that it appears that people are being let go for cash flow reasons rather than performance reasons. Your working associate may already be on the discharge list, the actual deed will occur when the company, stock market, or economy gets hammered.