Texas — the second largest state — is mentioned three times by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in an April 23 press release on mass layoffs (of 50 workers or more):
- Texas is the state with the third highest number of unemployment claims resulting from layoffs in March (14,284), after California (38,130) and Illinois (18,096), but ahead of Ohio (13,067).
- Texas is the third highest of 42 states reporting growth of layoff claimants year over year (+9,179), behind California (+16,318) and Illinois (+11,402).
- Texas is among 26 states reporting the worst month ever for March layoffs since the statistic has been tracked.
In a supporting table, the BLS shows that Texas reported 112 mass layoff events in March 2009 compared to 36 in March 2008.
But in keeping with some other “derivative” trends in the US economy, which may indicate that the rate of decline is slowing, the number of layoff events was one fewer than the 113 reported in February and 24 fewer than the 136 reported in January.
While the number of March jobless claims filed by Texas workers on the basis of mass layoffs was also fewer than January 2009 (16,893), it was nevertheless a large increase over February (9,769).
In the first quarter of 2009 at least 50,000 Texas jobs have been lost to mass layoffs.
The civilian labor force in Texas has grown by 243,000 over the past year (March to March) but the number of jobs has shrunk by 40,000 (TWC).