Someone just pointed me to a great visualization over at ManyEyes of layoff figures in the United States. The visualization is from March so the data is about 6 months out of date but still useful.
Many Eyes: Layoffs in the United States and more (3/6, updated).
I agree that this example is better looking than it is functional. Meanwhile, I took the same data and made an interactive visualization: http://visualizefree.com/public.jsp?id=sQrGbtfo
You can easily see the trend of layoffs over time, broken down by industry, and rank order the biggest announcements.
Quick – has Intel laid off more people than DuPont? Than Sprint? In the middle? Oh you can’t tell because this plot is horrendous.