Mass layoffs in March
May 01, 2003
Employers initiated 1,170 mass layoff actions in March 2003. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single establishment, and the number of workers involved totaled 109,838.
[Chart data—TXT]
Compared with March 2002, the number of layoff events declined by 20 percent and the number of workers involved fell by 32 percent. (March 2003 contained 4 weeks for possible mass layoffs, compared with 5 weeks in each March of the prior 3 years.)
From January through March 2003, the total number of events, at 4,767, and initial claims, at 450,312, were lower than the January-March 2002 levels of 4,989 and 564,141, respectively.
These data are from the Mass Layoff Statistics program. Mass layoffs data for February and March 2003 are preliminary and subject to revision. For more information, see news release USDL 03-201, "Mass Layoffs in March 2003" (PDF) (TXT).
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