Friday, May 22, 2009

Massive Unemployment: Mass Layoffs April 2009

Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the April installment of the Mass Layoff Report clearly showing continued deterioration of the nation’s job market with 2,547 mass layoff events resulting in 256,930 initial unemployment claims causing the six month moving average of non-seasonally adjusted mass layoff events to jump by 81.29% while total initial claimants increased 78.96% on a year-over-year basis.

The BLS considers a mass layoff event to be a condition where there are at least fifty initial claims for unemployment insurance originating from a single employer over a period of five consecutive weeks.