April 24, 2008 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Initial claims for unemployment insurance due to mass layoffs, March 2008

In March, employers took 1,571 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 employer; the number of workers involved totaled 157,156, on a seasonally adjusted basis.

[Chart data—TXT]

March layoff events and associated initial claimants were the highest for the month of March since 2003.

In March 2008, 482 mass layoff events were reported in the manufacturing sector, seasonally adjusted, resulting in 64,088 initial claims.

These data are from the Mass Layoff Statistics program. To learn more, see "Mass Layoffs in March 2008" (PDF) (HTML), news release USDL 08-0557.