Mass Layoffs In January-February 2003 — 2003-04-09

Employers initiated 3,597 mass layoff actions in January-February 2003, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the 2 months, 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 340,474. (See table 1.) In January-February 2002, there were 3,529 mass layoff events involving 402,805 workers. (January-February 2003 had one more week than the January-February periods of the prior two years.) With the resumption of the Mass Layoff Statistics program, data are now available since November 2002 (issued on Dec. 24, 2002). The addition of December brings the total of layoff events for all of 2002 to 20,269 and the total of initial claimants to 2,244,631. Both of these measures were lower than in 2001 (21,467 and 2,514,862, respectively). Additional information on the annual data is provided starting on page 2 of this release.