As the lockout rate for 2012 continues to climb (up to 9.1 percent of all work stoppages, according to our latest figures), I thought I should expand on two claims that I referred to in my previous post: first, that lockouts tend to affect more workers than strikes; and second, that lockouts tend to be longer than strikes.

For starters, let’s forget I ever mentioned that first claim. A few weeks ago, I noticed that lockouts in our database accounted for more than one out of every 10 workers idled by a work stoppage in 2012, but that’s not the case anymore (It’s at 8.4 percent now). The reality is that work stoppages come in all sizes, regardless of which side calls them. Last year, for example, lockouts accounted for nearly 12 percent of all stoppages but less than 9 percent of all workers affected. In 1992, on the other hand, almost two-thirds of all idled workers were locked out, but only because of one massive event that locked out 250,000 railroad workers.

The claim that lockouts are longer than strikes, however, has plenty of support. Since 1990, 68 percent of lockouts have lasted longer than two weeks, while only 48 percent of strikes have lasted that long. And that gap keeps getting wider over time. After one month, 55 percent of lockouts are still going strong, compared with only 30 percent of strikes. And by the time two months have passed, 43 percent of lockouts are still idling workers, while all but 18 percent of strikes have run out of steam.

What’s more, employers in recent years are producing not just more lockouts than they used to, but longer ones as well. The number of lockouts lasting longer than two weeks rose from 69 percent in the 1990s to more than 77 percent in 2010-2012. Meanwhile, the number of strikes lasting at least that long has declined, from 49 percent in the 1990s to 44 percent in 2010-2012. This trend holds up at the one- and two-month marks as well.