March 2002 — 2002-04-24

Employers initiated 1,460 mass layoff actions in March 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 single establishment, and the number of workers involved totaled 161,336. (See table 1.) Compared with March 2001, the number of layoff events declined by 4 percent and the number of claimants fell by 6 percent. This was the third time in the last four months that layoff events and related initial claims declined over the year. However, from January through March 2002, the total number of events, at 4,989, and initial claims, at 564,141, were higher than in January-March 2001 (4,550 and 544,717, respectively). This release uses the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) for the assignment and tabulation of layoff data by industry. Prior to 2002, the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system was used.