California job cuts from ‘mass layoffs’ up 25% last month
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More evidence of how the job market has fallen off a cliff this year: California was hit much harder in January by ‘mass layoff events’ -- cuts of 50 or more jobs by a single employer -- compared with December.
The number of Californians filing initial unemployment-benefit claims because they were let go as part of a mass layoff totaled 54,153 last month, a jump of 25% from December, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday.
By contrast, the January mass-layoff claims figure for the nation as a whole rose 11% to 388,813. The data aren’t adjusted for seasonal variations.
Among the 50 states, California had by far the largest number of mass-layoff cuts in January, but that isn’t surprising given the state’s No. 1 rank in population.
New York ranked second in mass-layoff claims, at 31,893. Next were Pennsylvania (29,656), Ohio (27,971) and Michigan (26,453).
The number of California companies announcing mass layoffs totaled 651 last month, up 19% from 546 in December. The national total for January was 3,806 companies, up 13%.
Still, California’s level of mass-layoff misery increased far less from a year earlier than the national experience. The total of mass-layoff benefit claims in the Golden State in January was up 40% from January 2008.
The national total last month was up 152% from a year earlier. In Texas the rise was a stunning 819%; it was 438% in South Carolina and 253% in Georgia.
The year-over-year numbers suggest the rest of the country is just starting to catch up with California’s jobless woes -- which also suggests that there are few greener pastures to which unemployed Californians can flee.
-- Tom Petruno