Record High Mass Layoffs

By Steven Greenhouse

There’s more bad news on the layoff front.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that employers laid off a record 508,859 workers in the fourth quarter of 2008 in what the bureau calls extended mass layoff events — layoffs involving 50 or more workers for at least 31 days.

That is by far the highest number involved in mass layoffs since the bureau began collecting that data in 1995. The fourth-quarter number represents a 69 percent increase over the 301,592 workers involved in extended mass layoffs in the fourth quarter of 2007.

According to the bureau, employers initiated 3,140 extended mass layoff events in the fourth quarter of 2008 — also a record — compared with 1,814 in the year-earlier quarter.

Factory and construction workers were hit especially hard. Manufacturing accounted for 185,686 of the workers involved in the extended mass layoffs. That was a record and represented 35 percent of all workers involved in extended mass layoffs nationwide even though manufacturing represents less than 10 percent of all jobs in the United States.

Construction accounted for 100,922 of those involved in extended mass layoffs in the fourth quarter. Some of this is explained by the seasonal construction slowdown, but even so, the fourth quarter number was more than double the number for the year-earlier quarter.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 45 percent of employers reporting an extended layoff in the fourth quarter said they anticipated some type of recall of those workers. That was down from 56 percent in the year-earlier quarter.

The Midwest reported the highest number of workers involved in extended mass layoffs — 202,392 — followed by the West with 164,717.

California had the largest number of such layoffs of any state (103,470), followed by Illinois (55,229), Michigan (38,820) and Ohio (30,295).

Among 369 metropolitan areas surveyed, Chicago-Naperville-Joliet (a metropolitan area falling in Ill.-Ind.-Wis.), reported the highest number of workers involved in these layoffs in the fourth quarter (19,894). Next were Detroit-Warren-Livonia, Mich., with 14,714 workers involved in mass layoffs, and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, Calif., with 12,438.