Extended Mass Layoffs In The Third Quarter Of 2006 — 2006-11-15

In the third quarter of 2006, employers took 836 mass layoff actions in the private nonfarm sector that resulted in the separation of 134,816 workers from their jobs for at least 31 days, according to preliminary figures released by the U.S. Department of Labor�s Bureau of Labor Sta- tistics. (See table A.) Layoff activity in the third quarter of 2006 was sharply lower than in the same period a year ago, when the effects of Hurricane Katrina were related to 358 of the 1,136 layoff events and to 57,551 of the 201,878 separated workers. In the third quarter of 2006, extended mass layoffs that involve the movement of work within the same company or to a different company, either domestically or outside the U.S., occurred in 8 percent of the nonseasonal layoff events and 11 percent of worker separations.