Mass Layoffs In September 2002 — 2002-10-24

Employers initiated 1,060 mass layoff actions in September 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 122,277. (See table 1.) A year ear- lier, in September 2001, there were 1,327 mass layoff events involving 160,402 workers. Over 9 percent of the initial claims in September 2002 were in general freight trucking (11,348), and an additional 6 percent were in the temporary help services industry (7,587). In January through Septem- ber 2002, both the total number of events, at 14,150, and initial claims, at 1,567,505, were lower than in January-September 2001 (14,475 and 1,734,530, respectively). 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 lay- offs.