December 2001 — 2002-01-29

In December 2001, there were 2,425 mass layoff actions by employers as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, according to data from 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 267,839. (See table 1.) The number of layoff events and initial claimants for unemploy- ment insurance, while lower than in December 2000, were the second highest for the month of December since the series began in April 1995. (December 2001 contained 4 weeks for possible mass layoffs, compared with 5 weeks in December 2000.) The total of layoff events for all of 2001, at 21,345, and the total number of initial claimants, at 2,496,784, were considerably higher than in 2000 (15,738 and 1,835,592, respectively). Additional information on the annual data is provided in the review of 2001 section on page 2 of this release.