U.S. Job Cuts Down 33% In May

Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, Inc. released its monthly job cuts report on Wednesday night. According to the release, planned job cuts by U.S. firms in May declined 33 percent from the previous month, falling to 41,034. This also marked a 23 percent year-over-year decrease.

April's total of 61,582 had marked the highest number since 2012.

The report noted that job cuts related to falling oil prices seem to have diminished substantially. This past month, about 1,000 planned layoffs were attributed to low oil prices, whereas April saw over 20,000 such cases.

The sharpest downsizing came in the financial sector, in which 5,539 workers have lost or will lose their jobs. The vast majority of these cuts came from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), which announced that it will be reducing the number of tellers working in its banks by 5,000 over the next 18 months.

The second-most impacted sector in May was government, which also plans to trim over 5,000 workers, which was led by the state of Massachusetts. The state will seek to address its deficit by removing 4,500 workers from its payroll.

To date in 2015, American employers have laid off 242,830 employees. This is a 13 percent increase over the first five months of 2014.

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE: SPY) was trading at $211.07, down 0.54 percent.