January 2002 — 2002-02-28

Employers initiated 2,146 mass layoff actions in January 2002, 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 sin- gle establishment, and the number of workers involved totaled 263,821. (See table 1.) The number of initial claimants for unemployment in- surance was the highest for the month of January since the series began in April 1995. This release uses the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) for the assignment and tabulation of layoff data by industry. Previously, the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system was used. Thus, all industry data in this release differ from data previously published. Additional information on this change is provided in the box on page 3 of this release. Manufacturing industries accounted for 42 percent of all mass layoff events and 49 percent of all initial claims filed in January 2002.