US unemployment

LAYOFFS SURGE 66% IN MAY OVER LAST YEAR

Business Insider,

31 May, 2012

ORIGINAL POST: The most jam-packed period of economic data reports that we can ever remember begins momentarily.

At 7:30 we get the Challenger Job Cuts report, which measures announced layoffs on a year-over-year basis.

There's no analyst estimate, but last month there was an 11.2 percent increase.
We'll have the number right here.

UPDATE:
Layoffs surged 66 percent in May according to Challenger, via Bloomberg.

The 61,887 announced cuts was the biggest rise in 8 months, according to Bloomberg's Linda Yueh.

Here's a full table of the layoffs by industry from the report.

Note that 27,754 are from computer-industry layoffs. That's all about HP. Without that, the number wouldn't have been quite that bad, although a layoff is still a layoff.