It look like good news may be coming to health care workers who, despite their relatively stable reputation, have been facing serious layoffs in the recent past.

According to data being put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics there were a lower number of mass layoffs in the health care industry in 2011 that there were in 2008. They were also lower than the number in 2009 and the number in 2010. In 2011 there were only 121 mass layoffs in hospitals. While that was a grand total of about 8,098 people claiming unemployment benefits that year as a result of mass layoffs the numbers are down.

For those of you who are not familiar with the term mass layoffs,  a mass layoff is defined as any situation in which a single company lets go of 50 or more workers at one time in one state. So if your company lets go of 50 workers across three states that will not qualify.

Even though things are looking better there have been some serious mass layoffs in the last couple of weeks that qualify as mass layoff actions.

UMass Memorial Health Care recently announced, that they were, “…ready to get rid of workers in order to correct its budget. This time the bad news is coming to the workers of UMass Memorial Health Care. This week the management of that health care facility announced that they would be letting go about 150 workers in the very near future.  They are also going to sell two of their business to other companies, a move that will put hundreds of other jobs in jeopardy. These moves are designed to help the company to make the $50 million in budget cuts that they need in order to stay in the black. “

Before that it was bad news for the workers at Mary University Medical Center in Lafayette, Louisiana. For those of you who missed our earlier coverage here is a look at the un certainty they faced about layoffs, “While no one is exactly certain who will be let go from the medical center, but they  notification were sent out, via email, to every member of the staff earlier in this week. The notices sent by email were not exactly layoff notices, they were more pre-warning notices that layoffs were coming in the future.

This news was not completely unexpected, as rumors of layoffs have been circulating around the campus for weeks now, it was still a bit of a surprise to a number of employees. One worker at the facility, Jignesh Petal, told a reporter for KATC news the following about the mood at the facility after the notices went out about the layoffs,  ‘I think the initial reaction was a shock and surprise. Most of us were not anticipating that there would be budget cuts.’

So, as you can imagine there is a lot of wondering about who is going to get the ax and who is going to stay in their jobs for the time being. We do know the following about the layoffs. The hospital administration was told that they have to cut about $4,000 from the budget each month, in order to make things work. This means that about four budgets will have their staffing cut. At the current moment there is no information about which departments will be cut from the budget at this time. The current word is that most of the workers in those target departments will be cut.”