February 13, 2012 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Extended mass layoff events, 2011
For all of 2011, employers reported 6,331 extended mass layoff actions, affecting 1,045,220 workers. Compared to 2010, the number of events decreased by 916 (13 percent) and the number of separations decreased 211,914 (17 percent).
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Permanent worksite closures accounted for 8 percent of extended mass layoff events in 2011, the lowest proportion of events due to closure in program history (with annual data available back to 1996).
Among the seven categories of economic reasons for layoff, layoffs due to business demand factors accounted for the largest number of events during 2011 (2,268), largely due to contract completion. Layoffs attributed to this reason occurred primarily in construction and in administrative and waste services, which includes temporary help services.
[Chart data]
In addition to business demand factors, seasonal factors accounted for the second largest number of layoff events during 2011 (2,188), followed by layoff events due to other/miscellaneous reasons (1,055), financial issues (401), and organizational changes (299).
These data are from the Mass Layoff Statistics program. Extended mass layoff data for 2011 are preliminary and subject to revision. For more information, see "Extended Mass Layoffs — Fourth Quarter 2011" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-12-0217. The series on extended mass layoffs cover layoffs of at least 31-days duration that involve 50 or more individuals from a single employer filing initial claims for unemployment insurance during a consecutive 5-week period.
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