The Bureau of Labor Statistics has announced that there were 1,571 mass layoff events in March. The number is actually down from February by 101 events, although that downturn is exaggerated by the fact that February had five calendar weeks and so more data was collected than usual (something that only happens once every 28 years). Despite the downturn, this is still the worst March since 2003.
A mass layoff number of 1,571 is on the high end, but we’re not necessarily looking at the Great Depression just yet, or even the bursting of the dot-com bubble. For comparison, the monthly 2006-2007 average is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,200. There were 1,761 mass layoffs in March 2001. The worst month in recent history was September 2001, when there were 2,407 mass layoffs.