Mass Layoffs, Led by California, Rose 54% in 4th Period --- Golden State Tallied 154,000, But the Midwest Saw Huge Percentage Gains
California, birthplace of the high-technology boom that helped carry the nation's economy to new heights, is also setting the national standard for layoffs. But the Midwest, bogged down in a manufacturing slowdown, is catching up quickly.</br></br>Those are among the highlights of a report released yesterday by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics on so-called mass layoffs, where companies terminate 50 or more employees at once, and the employees file for unemployment insurance. The report indicated that while mass layoffs started 2000 little changed from a year earlier, layoffs rose 54% for the fourth quarter from a year earlier as a slowing economy prompted big companies to make sharp cuts in their work forces. In the October to December period, there were 5,248 mass-layoff events involving 647,012 workers, compared with 3,943 events and 420,827 workers a year earlier.</br></br>For the entire year, there were 15,738 mass-layoff events affecting 1.84 million workers, compared with 14,909 events affecting 1.57 million in 1999. Not surprisingly, the largest percentage of the job cuts occurred in manufacturing, which accounted for 35% of all layoff events and 42% of all workers.</br></br>"Virtually everyone has been willing to admit that the manufacturing sector is miserable; the question now is whether that weakness spreads out to other areas of the economy," said Brian Jones, an economist at Salomon Smith Barney.</br></br>The distribution of mass layoffs on a state-by-state basis showed some surprising results. Partly as a result of an unfolding energy crisis, declining sales of technology equipment and the dot-com blowout, California reported nearly 155,000 mass layoffs for the fourth quarter, a 14% jump from a year earlier. The state also has seen huge job losses in the motion-picture and agriculture industries, although those industries are seasonal and experience heavy turnover.