Mass Layoffs In June 2002 — 2002-07-24

Employers initiated 1,557 mass layoff actions in June 2002, as mea- sured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single establishment, and the number of workers involved totaled 159,352. (See table 1.) A year earlier, in June 2001, there were 2,107 mass layoff events involving 253,826 workers. (June 2002 contained 4 weeks for possible mass layoffs, compared with 5 weeks in each June of the prior 2 years.) From January through June 2002, the total number of initial claims, at 1,069,361, was lower than January-June 2001 (1,134,173), while the number of events, at 9,779, was somewhat higher (9,541). The monthly data series in this release cover mass layoffs of 50 or more workers beginning in a given month, regardless of the duration of the layoffs.