May 31, 2005 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Layoffs in April 2005

In April 2005, employers took 1,274 mass layoff actions, seasonally adjusted, as measured by new filings for unemployment insurance benefits during the month. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single establishment, and the number of workers involved totaled 136,837, seasonally adjusted.

Mass layoff events, seasonally adjusted, April 2004-April 2005
[Chart data—TXT]

The number of layoff events rose by 80, and the number of associated initial claims increased by 5,989 from March 2005.

In the manufacturing sector, 395 mass layoff events were reported during April 2005, higher than a month earlier.

From January through April 2005, the total number of events, 5,053, was lower than in January-April 2004 (5,465).

These data are from the Mass Layoff Statistics program. Mass layoffs data for March and April 2005 are preliminary and subject to revision. To learn more, see "Mass Layoffs in April 2005" (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 05-878.

Happy 10th Birthday, TED!

The very first issue of The Editor's Desk (TED) was posted on September 28, 1998. TED was the first online-only publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For 10 years, BLS has been committed to posting a new TED article each business day, for a total of over 2,400 articles so far.

Find out more about the story of TED