Friday, March 20, 2009

Massive Unemployment: Mass Layoffs February 2009

Today I’m adding the Mass Layoff statistics to the lineup of recurring posts as it is very clearly reflecting the truly phenomenal stress currently being felt across the nation’s job market.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) latest release of the Mass Layoff Report clearly shows a dramatic deterioration of the nation’s job market with 2,262 mass layoff events resulting in 218,438 initial unemployment claims causing the six month moving average of non-seasonally adjusted mass layoff events to jump by 77.79% while total initial claimants increased 77.87% on a year-over-year basis.

The BLS considers a mass layoff event to be a condition where there are at least fifty initial claims for unemployment insurance originating from a single employer over a period of five consecutive weeks.