Military.com’s Spouse Career Center section has an article on what to say during a job interview when you lost a previous job because of a layoff or a firing.

A snippet:

If you are among the thousands of people who have been laid off in the last two years, you can simply state: “I was laid off.”

This answers the question but still leaves a lingering doubt in the mind of the interviewer, “Why were you laid off?” The more specific your answer, the more effective it will be. For example: “There were six rounds of layoffs at my last company. I survived five rounds, but when it came to round six they had to cut deep. My position was eliminated along with half of my group because the project we were working on was cancelled.”

Hmm … I would not have thought about being that specific about the details of a layoff.

But it would be particularly helpful in situations where a prospective employer is not familiar with what happened at your prior workplace (military families or corporate transfers who have lived in several states would particularly fall into that situation).