Need? No, but it does make recruitment easier as people take LinkedIn profiles as a source of truth when it is so easy to lie about where you have worked.
Thats a fair point, I do wonder though how long it would take for company to realize though, cause afaik you can make shit up on linkedin as well. Not sure if the companies get notified about that and if they can revoke such a claim.
I got a message from an old employer asking me to remove their name from my current employment in LinkedIn because I haven’t updated it in like 5 years. That leads me to believe companies can not remove employment history from a profile.