Saturday, March 21, 2009

Monthly mass layoff events in United States

Back in the February of 2008, I noted in the Recession and mass layoffs that if the mass layoffs increase by a lot then it will be a sign of a recession. Since then the mass layoff events in the US have really gone up by a lot, not surprisingly the US in a deep recession right now. It will be very important to keep an eye on this number as we try to recover from this recession because if the economy starts to improve, the mass layoff number should come down or at least stabilize a little. 

The chart below shows the mass layoffs in the United States since March 2005. The data table below lists the data used to create the chart.


MonthMass layoff events
Mar-051,204
Apr-051,244
May-051,264
Jun-051,196
Jul-051,241
Aug-051,143
Sep-052,250
Oct-051,109
Nov-051,162
Dec-051,263
Jan-061,112
Feb-06960
Mar-061,078
Apr-061,198
May-061,132
Jun-061,156
Jul-061,204
Aug-061,278
Sep-061,167
Oct-061,195
Nov-061,209
Dec-061,201
Jan-071,261
Feb-071,240
Mar-071,261
Apr-071,281
May-071,200
Jun-071,256
Jul-071,288
Aug-071,262
Sep-071,279
Oct-071,346
Nov-071,352
Dec-071,469
Jan-081,476
Feb-081,669
Mar-081,585
Apr-081,344
May-081,701
Jun-081,717
Jul-081,535
Aug-081,887
Sep-082,290
Oct-082,204
Nov-082,333
Dec-082,275
Jan-092,227
Feb-092,769

Datasource: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/mmls.nr0.htm

1 comment:

Fund Trading Strategies said...

I understand that the Federal, State, and Local government needs to reduce their labor force in order to make budget cuts.

The local government needs to make immediate cuts to remain solvent. The State government has a more intermediate term. And the Federal government can make labor cuts over a longer 9 - 18 month period.

In order to to keep people off the unemployment rolls, an orderly lay-off program should have been enacted. More specifically:

1. Identify the amount of people to lay-off

2. Define the time line to lay-off people

3. Inform the employee when they will be laid-off. People could then search for a new job while still employed.

4. Some people will find new jobs prior to the lay-off date. This will keep people off the unemployment rolls.

5. This orderly lay-off would provide markets certainty as they would be able to know exactly how many Government employees would be introduced into the labor market each month.

Thanks for the blog post.