February 02, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

More mass layoffs in 2000

In 2000, there were 15,738 layoff events and 1,835,592 initial claimants for unemployment insurance in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

 

[Chart data—TXT]

Both the number of events and the number of initial claimants were higher than in 1999, when layoff events totaled 14,909 and the total number of initial claimants was 1,572,399.

In 2000, manufacturing accounted for 35 percent of all mass layoff events and 42 percent of initial claims filed. Initial claim filings were most numerous in transportation equipment (192,047), food and kindred products (88,942) and industrial machinery and equipment (73,215).

These data are a product of the Mass Layoff Statistics program. A mass layoff event involves at least 50 persons from a single establishment. Read more about recent mass layoffs in Mass Layoffs in December 2000, news release USDL 01-33.