Massive Unemployment: Mass Layoffs April 2011

The latest release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Mass Layoff Report indicated a notable jump in large-scale layoffs with 1564 mass layoff events for April resulting in 143,927 initial unemployment claimants on a seasonally adjusted 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.