Mass Layoffs In August 2002 — 2002-09-25

Employers initiated 1,247 mass layoff actions in August 2002, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Sta- tistics. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single esta- blishment, and the number of workers involved totaled 128,080. (See table 1.) A year earlier, in August 2001, there were 1,490 mass layoff events involving 166,148 workers. Mass layoff initial claims in August are usually among the lowest for the year. Almost 9 percent of the initial claims in August were from the temporary help services industry (11,059). From January through August 2002, both the total number of events, at 13,090, and initial claims, at 1,445,228, were lower than January-August 2001 (13,148 and 1,574,128, 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 layoffs.