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Handbook of Methods Work Stoppages Presentation

Work Stoppages: Presentation

The Work Stoppages program provides monthly and annual data on major work stoppages (involving 1,000 or more workers) lasting one full shift or longer, for private industry and state and local government. The program's news releases, data, and other information can be found at www.bls.gov/wsp.

Work stoppages provide media, researchers, labor relations specialists, union, and government labor agencies with information about labor management disputes in the national economy across the business cycle. While the Work Stoppages program does not report on the nature of the dispute, identifying the details of parties involved enables users to assess the impact of compensation trends, union membership and activity, and legislation.

Detailed data on major work stoppages provide monthly and annual listings of companies and government's involved in a work stoppage including:

• the name of the establishment(s) involved in the dispute
• the name of the union involved in the dispute
• the location of the stoppage
• the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for affected establishments
• the beginning and ending dates of the dispute
• the number of lost workdays during the reference month
• the cumulative number of lost workdays from the beginning of the work stoppage
• the number of workers idled by the stoppage
• the number of days of idleness during the reference month
• the cumulative number of days of idleness from the beginning of the work stoppage.

Accessing data

The complete set of major work stoppages data can be found at www.bls.gov/wsp. Major work stoppages data can be found for various time periods:

• Detailed monthly data is available from 1993 and can be accessed in monthly form at https://www.bls.gov/wsp/#tables or as an html listing at https://www.bls.gov/web/wkstp/monthly-listing.htm. 
• Annual work stoppages historical news releases, available since 1992, can be accessed at www.bls.gov/bls/news-release/home.htm#WKSTP. 
• Time series monthly data back to 1981 and annual data back to 1947 are available at https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ws. Data for the prior month are typically available (at www.bls.gov/wsp) the Friday following the Employment Situation release.
• Annual summary historical table on major work stoppages since 1947, showing the number of work stoppages, number of workers involved, number of total days idle, and percent of estimated working time are available at www.bls.gov/news.release/wkstp.t01.htm.
• Historical publications (1936–79) containing additional work stoppages information and data can be located at www.bls.gov/wsp/questions-and-answers.htm#Question_10.