Yes... IG pays dust to the rate you are unfollowing. I have unfollowed like 2k-3k in a day in multiple accounts never had a problem... I unfollow for some reasons: 1 - Open space to follow new people that can eventually follow me back, 2 - Clean up and have a good looking acc (From a user point of view, I don't like going to someone's accounts and seeing they follow thousands of people, even though they can have three times the number of that in followers, I think it looks dirty). I try keep my followings under 1,5k. Right now I run two accs, one with over 26k followers and at this moment 900 followings and another with 3k followers and about 1,3 following... You can see which one looks worse. The former is a lot successful, with about 300-500 new followers per day, while the latter is somewhat struggling (under 100 new followers per day, but usually around 50-80).
What I find amusing is the amount of engagmenets OP is getting. I mean, with my 26k account, I usually get about 250-300 likes within the first hour I've posted a new pic, with about 100 likes in just 10 min. In 24h it usually gets to around 750-900 likes (and I've noticed this total amount doesn't really depend on the time I post the content). Some pics ocasionally surpass 1k in likes. The thing is I've been with this average of likes since my account had about 18-19k followers and I don't know what's possibly wrong with it, as it has grown nearly 7k followers since (in the timespan of 3 weeks).
This account with 26k followers has an accompanying website (which registers a number between 100 and 150 unique visitors per day, in average, having had peaks of 250-300 visits depending on how much new content was posted in a day). The IG account is not monetized, I post organic pics with, sometimes, mentions to website (like, see more at website). I don't do CPA offers or paid shout-outs (sometimes I shoutout accounts in the same niche, without even asking money for it...). The thing is also, I've been receiving about 100-150 unique visits a day since this account only had 10k in followers and Instagram is the primary promoting platform, with nearly the triple of followers, the amount of visitors in the website has remained the same and it really gets me wondering.