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THE CASE FOR TRIPLING UNION MEMBERSHIP  
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Heidi Shierholz, Celine McNicholas, Josh Bivens, Jennifer Sherer, Ben
Zipperer, Margaret Polydock
July 15, 2026
Economic Policy Institute
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*
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_ How rebuilding union power would strengthen workers, the economy,
and our democracy _

, Economic Policy Institute

 

FOREWORD

Imagine union membership tripling in the United States. It may sound
radical—if you’ve forgotten history. In fact, more than 1 in 3
private-sector workers belonged to a union in the 1950s. The results?
Wages grew in tandem with the economy. The middle class thrived.
Black-white wage gaps shrank. Broadly shared economic growth was a
reality, not an aspiration. That’s because when workers have
bargaining power, they win better wages, benefits, and working
conditions. This report shines a light on what we stand to win if we
rebuild union power.

Over the last four decades, big corporations and the billionaires who
run them have waged a relentless campaign against unions. And they
have largely succeeded in reshaping the U.S. economy. By making it
harder and harder for workers to organize and bargain collectively,
the rich seized more and more income and wealth, destroying the U.S.
middle class. Now the wealth of the richest Americans has exploded:
The richest 0.1% own more than five times the combined wealth of the
entire bottom half of the country.

And yet, workers haven’t given up. In 2025, unionization ticked
upward. Public approval of unions has reached some of its highest
levels in decades, and more than 50 million nonunion workers say
they’d join a union tomorrow if they could. That’s because they
know what unions deliver. In an economy that has been rigged against
working people for decades, unions serve as a counterweight to
corporate power—reducing inequality and building the kind of middle
class that underpins a strong and inclusive economy.

It will take serious policy change to reverse nearly 50 years of
deliberate attacks on working people and their institutions. It will
require that politicians stand up to the superrich and corporate
interests. It will require that workers continue to build power. But,
as this report shows, we have much to gain from stronger unions. An
organized and empowered workforce has powerful and far-reaching
economic benefits.

Nearly four decades ago, I helped found the Economic Policy Institute
because working people needed a voice in the economic debates that
shape their lives. This report is exactly the work we envisioned:
rigorous research that puts workers at the center of economic policy,
and that arms all of us with the facts to fight for them. At a time
when our economy is held in relatively few hands, we need this
work—and we need unions—more than ever. 

ROBERT REICH_Professor, writer, and former Secretary of Labor_

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Union membership in the U.S. ticked up in 2025, breaking a
decades-long trend of declining unionization. But today’s
unionization rate doesn’t reflect the tens of millions of workers
who want a union but can’t get one. This report examines what we
stand to gain if we triple current union membership to 30%—restoring
it to 1950s levels, when union strength delivered rising wages,
narrowing racial wage gaps, and a thriving middle class.

TRIPLING UNION MEMBERSHIP WOULD:

* DELIVER A 14.5% RAISE FOR THE MEDIAN WORKER—AMOUNTING TO MORE
THAN $7,700 ANNUALLY, OR NEARLY $270,000 OVER A 35-YEAR CAREER. These
life-changing increases would benefit union and nonunion workers
alike.
* SHIFT $1.2 TRILLION TO WORKERS ANNUALLY. This would reverse a
third of the increase in inequality experienced since 1979.
* SIGNIFICANTLY NARROW RACIAL WAGE GAPS. Because unions tend to
boost wages more for Black and Hispanic workers than for white
workers, tripling union membership would close racial wage gaps by
more than one-third.
* BOOST THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WITH HEALTH INSURANCE. Since unions
increase other forms of compensation, like health insurance benefits,
the number of nonelderly people without health insurance would fall by
about 25%. Unions further reduce uninsured rates by advocating for
increased public benefits like Medicaid.
* STRENGTHEN COMMUNITIES. States with high union density invest more
in public education, have higher unemployment insurance recipiency
rates, and have all adopted Medicaid expansion.
* PROTECT DEMOCRACY. Unions boost voter turnout, equip workers with
civic skills, and actively defend voting rights. States with high
union density have passed far fewer voter restriction bills than
low-density states.

ROADMAP FOR TRIPLING UNION DENSITY

Reversing decades of political neglect that has stealthily undermined
workers’ rights to unions and collective bargaining will require
comprehensive reform that weaves together tested approaches with bold
new ideas, at both federal and state levels.

TWO BILLS WITH BIPARTISAN SUPPORT COULD HELP RESTORE COLLECTIVE
BARGAINING

* The PROTECTING THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE ACT would restore
private-sector workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively.
It would streamline the union formation process, establish penalties
for labor law violations, override so-called “right-to-work” laws,
and ban “captive audience” meetings.
* The PUBLIC SERVICE FREEDOM TO NEGOTIATE ACT would be the first
federal law that guarantees all public-sector workers at the federal,
state, and local levels the right to organize and collectively
bargain.

TWO BOLD NEW PROPOSALS COULD EXPAND THE BENEFITS OF COLLECTIVE
BARGAINING AND HELP TACKLE THE AFFORDABILITY CRISIS

* GUARANTEED ANNUAL RAISES FOR NEWLY UNIONIZED WORKERS. Legislation
providing that newly unionized workers can use arbitration to achieve
a first contract (if an employer fails to negotiate in good faith)
should set a minimum standard that such contracts include a
cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). For the typical worker, a 3% COLA
means roughly $2,000 extra a year.
* DEFAULT COLLECTIVE BARGAINING WHEN CEO-TO-WORKER PAY RATIOS EXCEED
100:1. Declining unionization and the stratospheric rise in CEO pay
are deeply connected. Strengthening the bargaining power of workers in
severely imbalanced companies would enable them to capture a larger
share of the wealth their work creates.

STATES CAN REMOVE ANTI-UNION LAWS AND PROTECT COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

REMOVING SO-CALLED “RIGHT-TO-WORK” LAWS AND RESTRICTIONS ON
PUBLIC-SECTOR BARGAINING ALONE WOULD INCREASE UNION DENSITY NATIONALLY
FROM 9.9% TO 14.4%. Beyond removing those unionization barriers,
states can also:

* Extend collective bargaining rights to workers currently excluded
from federal law (in-home child care, home health care, agricultural,
and gig workers);
* Protect workers’ right to refuse mandatory, anti-union
“captive audience” meetings; and
* Extend unemployment insurance eligibility to workers on strike.

INTRODUCTION

In 2025, 14.7 million workers—10% of all wage and salary
workers—were union members, an increase from 9.9% in 2024.1
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Though small, the increase marks a departure from prior years’
downward trend in union density and coincides with record high public
favorability of unions.2
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This report examines what the U.S. might look like if union membership
were to triple to 30%, restoring it to roughly its 1950s peak. We
analyze the economic, social, and democratic impacts of this increase;
examine the potential impact on state union density rates if all
states were to remove anti-union policies; and offer policy
recommendations to expand union membership.

While tripling union membership is an ambitious goal, it is fully
consistent with workers’ own demand for unions. Recent survey data
show that 43% of nonunion workers would vote to unionize if given the
opportunity—the equivalent of about 56 million wage and salary
workers (Ahlquist, Grumbach, and Kochan 2024; McNicholas, Poydock, and
Shierholz 2026). If all these workers unionized, union density would
rise from 10% to 48.7%—well above the 30% goal we examine in this
paper.

UNION DECLINE, WAGE SUPPRESSION, AND AFFORDABILITY

As union membership has declined, workers’ wages have been
suppressed and inequality has skyrocketed. The gap between typical
workers’ pay and economy-wide productivity is at a historic high.3
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Since 1979, productivity has grown 2.7 times as much as pay for
typical workers (FIGURE A). This divergence reflects both rising wage
inequality—high earners experiencing much stronger wage growth than
typical workers—and a shrinking share of the economy’s income
going to workers overall. Between 1979 and 2023, real
(inflation-adjusted) earnings for the top 0.1% grew 354% (from
$618,000 to $2.8 million), while earnings for the bottom 90% of
households grew just 44% (from $30,000 to $43,000) (EPI 2026a). And
workers are now taking home a historically low share of
corporate-sector income—meaning shareholders and other capital
owners are capturing more than ever before (EPI 2026b).

Figure A

 

Inequality has grown since 1979 because of intentional policy choices
that suppressed wages for typical workers to accelerate income growth
at the top. If pay for typical workers had kept pace with productivity
over the past nearly five decades, their paychecks today would be more
than 40% larger (EPI 2026c). Though affordability pressures are often
framed as a problem of high prices, the real problem is this wage
shortfall—and reversing that shortfall must be central to any
serious affordability agenda. Collective bargaining is the most
effective mechanism workers have to raise their wages and secure their
fair share of economic growth. Expanding union membership and
collective bargaining is central to addressing the affordability
squeeze.

UNIONS RAISE WAGES FOR ALL WORKERS

One of the most well-studied benefits of unions is the ability of
collective bargaining to raise pay—resulting in a “union wage
premium.”4
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Historically, that premium has fluctuated around 15–20% (EPI 2026d).
Unions also reduce inequality by compressing the wage distribution
within firms, with the largest benefits going to workers at the bottom
and middle. This is one reason the union wage premium is typically
larger for those with less education, and for Black and Hispanic
workers relative to white workers (Bivens et al. 2023).

Less appreciated is that unions also boost wages for nonunion workers.
Higher wages at unionized firms make those jobs more attractive to
nonunion workers, indirectly pressuring nonunion firms to raise wages
to keep their workers. Nonunion firms may also raise wages to avoid
unionization, especially when union density is already high in the
relevant sectors and occupations.

Finally, unions also advocate for progressive changes in the tax and
benefit system—indirectly raising _pre-tax_ pay for low- and
middle-wage workers. This happens in two main ways: First, when taxes
on top incomes are higher, corporate executives have less incentive to
maximize their own income at the expense of workers’ wages.5
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Second, more generous social benefits like SNAP and Medicaid increase
the bargaining power of lower-paid workers by making them less
economically vulnerable and better able to reject low-quality jobs
(Bivens 2026).6
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These “spillover” effects of unions on the nonunion sector are
significant and increase when union density is high. Rosenfeld,
Denice, and Laird (2016) and Farber et al. (2021) find strong evidence
that unions raise the wages of nonunion workers. Consistent with this,
Fortin, Lemieux, and Lloyd (2021) estimate that between 1979 and 2017,
declining unionization was responsible for 37% of the increase in
inequality between the 90th and 50th percentiles of male workers—and
_more than half_ of that impact occurred because, as unions weakened,
nonunion employers faced less pressure to offer higher wages.

TRIPLING UNION DENSITY WOULD SHIFT $1.2 TRILLION A YEAR TO WORKING
PEOPLE

Our analysis of the relationship between union density and state
median wages finds that for every 10 percentage point difference in
union density, real median wages are about 7.2% higher.7
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If we tripled union density from 10% to 30%, the real median wage for
all workers (including both union and nonunion workers_) _would rise
from $25.67 in 2025 to $29.39 per hour—a 14.5% increase.8
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A full-time, full-year worker earning that wage would see annual pay
rise by more than $7,700.

To put this into perspective, consider the substantial growth in the
gap between pay and productivity between 1979 and 2025. A full-time,
full-year worker at the 2025 median wage was paid about $53,400 per
year—but would have earned about $76,400 had their pay kept pace
with productivity growth (EPI 2026e). Through direct wage increases
for union members and unionization’s spillover effects on nonunion
workers, tripling union density would close roughly one-third of the
productivity-pay gap, increasing annual pay to $61,100.

To contextualize the gain in another way, consider that the median
annual cost of a mortgage in the U.S. is $18,252. An additional $7,700
per year would cover more than 40% of that cost.9
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Perhaps more strikingly, consider that an extra $7,700 a year adds up
to nearly $270,000 (in today’s dollars) over the course of a
35-year career—a life-changing increase for a working family.
Adjusting the USDA’s latest estimate of the cost of raising a child
to 2025 dollars yields a current cost of roughly $317,000 to raise a
child from birth through age 17, including food, housing,
transportation, health care, clothing, child care, education, and
other expenses (USDA 2017). The additional $270,000 in career earnings
that a typical worker would receive if union density were tripled
would cover 85% of that cost.

Or, according to the College Board, the average annual cost of
attending a four-year in-state public college, including room and
board, is about $31,000 (Ma, Pender, and Hu 2025). Over four years,
that comes to $124,000 per student—so the additional $270,000 in
career earnings would more than cover the cost of sending two children
to college.

Yet another way to show how transformational these effects would be
for the U.S. economy and the economic security of typical families:
Assuming the 14.5% wage boost we estimate from a tripling of union
density applies to the bottom 80% of the U.S. workforce,
this would raise these workers’ combined pay each
year by $1.2 trillion.10
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Several useful reference points help illustrate the scale of this $1.2
trillion increase in workers’ annual pay. First, the increase would
be nearly three times as large as the $430 billion U.S. families
received in “COVID checks”—and unlike those one-time checks,
these gains would be permanent and recurring.11
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Second, the $1.2 trillion that tripling union density would shift to
workers slightly exceeds the Pentagon’s 2025 budget—a
redistribution of income on a scale comparable to the entirety of the
U.S. military-industrial complex.12
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Third and most revealingly, this increase would claw back a full third
of the increase in income inequality since 1979. Between 1979 and
2022, the share of market income going to the richest 20% of
households rose by 12.0 percentage points (with nearly all of that
increase—10.1 percentage points—accruing to the richest 1%).
A $1.2 trillion increase in the incomes of the bottom 80% of
households would reverse a third of that shift, 4.0 of the 12.0
percentage points.13
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OUR ESTIMATES LIKELY UNDERESTIMATE FUTURE GAINS

It’s worth noting that while our estimates show large wage gains to
workers from tripling union density, they are likely being
significantly held down by the fact that union density in the U.S. is
starting from such a low level (10%). Our estimates therefore likely
understate the wage gains workers will experience once the labor
market reaches a higher level of union density. Fortin, Lemieux, and
Lloyd (2021) find that the wage payoff to union density is much larger
where density is already high, and this shows up clearly in our
analysis as well: Below 15% union density, a one percentage point
increase in density is associated with just a 0.2% increase in the
median wage; above 15%, the median wage increases by 0.9%—a wage
response more than four times as large (see FIGURE B).14
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Figure B

The economic intuition behind this 15% threshold is that a minimum
scale of unionization is needed for collectively bargained wages to
exert a strong influence on pay scales—both union and
nonunion—throughout the broader economy. While every additional
percentage point of unionization gives another 1% of workers the union
pay premium, it has a more limited effect on wage-setting throughout
the broader labor market until overall union density reaches around
15%.

Today’s typical state has a union density of about 10%, which means
the wage gains from each additional percentage point of
unionization—while still significant—are muted relative to the
gains that occur once union density exceeds 15%. In essence, the
policy assault on unions in recent decades has pushed density so low
that we need a 50% increase—from 10% to 15% union density—just to
start realizing the “normal” gains unions can bring to a high-road
economy. Raising density from 10% to 30% would carry the labor market
across that 15% threshold and well into the higher-density regime,
where each additional percentage point increase in unionization
delivers substantially larger gains for the median worker. This is why
a transformational policy effort is needed: We must rebuild union
density from the depressed levels created by decades of political
neglect to the point where the full wage benefits of widespread
collective bargaining can be realized.

UNIONS REDUCE RACIAL WAGE GAPS

Because unions increase wages for Black and Hispanic workers more than
for white workers, unions reduce racial wage gaps. And this dynamic is
not new—research shows that the union premium was already higher for
Black workers than for white workers by the mid-20th century, meaning
that the spread of unionization in that era was one of the country’s
greatest forces for racial justice (Farber et al. 2021; Bivens et al.
2023). But with the decline in unionization over the past 45 years,
racial wage gaps have widened and are now substantially worse than
they were in 1979—damage that restoring union power would more than
reverse. In 2025, the median Black or Hispanic worker earned 76.5% of
the median white worker wage—a wage gap of 23.5%. Tripling union
density would close more than one-third of that gap, reducing it to
14.6%.15
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UNIONS BOOST BENEFITS, NOT JUST PAY

Unions also increase other forms of compensation, like health
insurance benefits. In 2025, 95% of union workers had
employer-sponsored health insurance, relative to 71% of nonunion
workers. In addition, as discussed later, unions further reduce
uninsured rates by advocating for increased public benefits like
Medicaid. FIGURE C shows that nonelderly uninsurance rates are
substantially lower in states with higher union density. To do this
analysis, we divided the 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia
into three equally sized groups based on their current (2023–2025)
level of union density.16
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Most low-union-density states have double-digit uninsured rates, but
these rates typically fall to the single digits in medium- and
high-union-density states. If union density tripled and all states
were high-density states, the national nonelderly uninsured rate would
fall by about a quarter, from 9.8% to 7.3%.

Figure C

 

UNIONS BENEFIT COMMUNITIES

Unions don’t just improve workers’ pay and benefits—they give
workers a voice in shaping the social fabric of their communities,
lifting standards for union and nonunion workers alike. The data
reveal a strong correlation between higher levels of unionization and
a range of economic and personal well-being measures. When more
workers are in unions, states have more equitable economic and social
structures (McNicholas et al. 2025). Meanwhile, states with anti-union
policies have lower union density and consistently worse outcomes
across these measures.

ECONOMIC WELL-BEING

We first examine economic well-being—broadly defined as working
people having the means to support themselves—using two indicators:
the gap between productivity and pay, and unemployment insurance
recipiency rates.

As discussed earlier, there has been a growing gap since 1979 between
productivity—the value of the output generated by a worker in the
U.S. economy in an hour of work, on average—and typical workers’
hourly compensation. Far from accidental, this divergence stems from
deliberate policy choices in the U.S. beginning around 1980 that
allowed the gains from economic growth to be increasingly captured by
the highest earners, shareholders, and other capital owners—rather
than being broadly shared across low-, middle-, and high-income
households (Shierholz 2024).

The degree to which productivity gains have translated into higher pay
for typical workers varies widely across states. FIGURE D shows that
in states with smaller declines in unionization since 1979, a larger
share of productivity gains translated into higher pay for typical
workers. In other words, in places where unions remained stronger, it
wasn’t just those with high incomes and wealth who benefited from
economic growth—working people, both unionized and nonunionized, saw
a bigger share of the gains.

Figure D

 

Unemployment insurance (UI) recipiency rates also offer insight into
economic well-being. When a worker is laid off and their household
income falls, unemployment insurance supports them and their family
until they find another job. UI is a joint federal-state program that
relies on state UI systems to effectively deliver benefits to
unemployed workers. States differ in their rules and approaches under
the federal UI framework, leading to wide variation in the share of
unemployed workers receiving UI benefits (the UI recipiency rate).

Studies show a strong correlation between higher UI recipiency rates
and high union density (Clegg et al. 2022); FIGURE E illustrates this
strong positive relationship. In recent years, the average UI
recipiency rate in high-union-density states was 36%, double the 18%
rate in low-union-density states.

Unions fight to increase UI eligibility, ease of access, benefit
levels, and benefit duration—to the benefit of all workers, union
and nonunion (Hertel-Fernandez and Gould-Werth 2020). The strong
correlation between union density and state UI recipiency rates
suggests that expanding unionization by removing anti-union policies
would result in higher UI recipiency rates.

Figure E

 

PERSONAL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

Next we examine personal health and well-being—which we define as an
individual’s physical and mental health—using one indicator,
Medicaid expansion.

As we noted earlier, almost all union workers (95%) have access to
health insurance, and uninsured rates are lower in high-union-density
states. To show how unions influence health care coverage beyond
explicitly bargained workplace plans, we examine whether a state has
expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to broaden
eligibility. The Medicaid public insurance program provides critical
health coverage to families and individuals with low incomes. Research
has found that Medicaid expansion has expanded access to health care;
improved health outcomes, including fewer premature deaths; lowered
uncompensated costs; bolstered financial security; and boosted
economic mobility (CBPP 2020). While the Medicaid program has broad
federal guidelines, it is administered by states—and a 2012 Supreme
Court decision gave them the power to decide on eligibility and
expansion. Since 2014, 40 states plus the District of Columbia have
adopted Medicaid expansion; 10 states have not (Alabama, Florida,
Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas,
Wisconsin, and Wyoming).

FIGURE F shows a stark divide between high- and low-union-density
states in terms of Medicaid expansion. All 17 high-union-density
states have expanded Medicaid. Out of 17 medium-union-density states,
14 have adopted Medicaid expansion (Alabama, Kansas, and Wisconsin are
the only medium-union-density states that have not adopted expansion).
Just 10 out of 17 low-union-density states have adopted Medicaid
expansion (Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Texas, and Wyoming are the low-union-density states that have not
adopted expansion).

There is a strong correlation between union density and Medicaid
expansion. If states removed anti-union policies and became
high-union-density states, they would be joining a group of states in
which Medicaid expansion is currently universal, potentially helping
to close the Medicaid coverage gap that currently leaves 1.5 million
adults uninsured (Zhang 2026).

Figure F

 

SPENDING ON PUBLIC EDUCATION

Union density also intersects with public education investment.
Investment in public education helped make the U.S. the richest
country in the world in the 20th century. The benefits of universal
education are many—including a more productive workforce, and a
more informed and engaged democratic society equipped to think
critically. Unions play a key role in negotiating public spending on
education. At the school district and state level, education unions
advocate for increased funds for schools. 

We can measure the relationship between union density and public
education investment by looking at states’ level of per-pupil
spending. Adequate levels of per-pupil spending are crucial to
maintaining quality education; low per-pupil spending limits the
support students receive toward achieving their learning goals and
makes it harder for districts to retain teachers and
staff by offering competitive salaries or benefits. Increased
per-pupil funding pays off for students. Research has
consistently shown that increased funding for schools
improves educational attainment, student achievement, and economic
outcomes in adulthood (Jackson and Mackevicius 2023). In one study,
researchers examined the impact of school finance reforms between
1972 and 2010 and found that a 10% increase in school spending for 12
years leads to increased high school graduation rates, 7% higher
wages, and 10% higher family incomes in adulthood for children from
districts that saw the spending increase (Jackson, Johnson, and
Persico 2016).

FIGURE G shows that states with higher rates of unionization
spend substantially more per pupil on education—demonstrating the
impact of union advocacy on education investment and building a more
educated society.

Figure G

 

VOTING RIGHTS AND DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION

Many states disproportionately disenfranchise people of color (Johnson
and Feldman 2020), and the number of voter suppression laws enacted
across the country is high and rising. These restrictions threaten
democratic participation and the stability of our democracy.

Unions strengthen democracy by encouraging civic engagement and
helping workers become informed voters. Unions communicate with their
members about issues and candidates to make sure workers have the
information they need when they go to the polls. And as democratic
institutions where members elect leaders and ratify contracts, unions
serve as “schools of democracy,” equipping workers with civic
skills that carry over to public life (Andrias and Hertel-Fernandez
2026). More broadly, because many organizations that shape policy
represent elite or corporate interests, unions are a countervailing
force, bringing working people’s voices into legislative debates and
building coalitions that can win against well-resourced opposition.

Research shows that these effects translate into greater political
participation. Union members are more likely to vote than the general
public, and voter turnout is higher in states with greater
unionization (EPI 2021). Conversely, turnout is lower in states with
“right-to-work” (RTW) laws, which weaken unions and in turn the
civic engagement they foster. Feigenbaum, Hertel-Fernandez, and
Williamson (2018) found that RTW laws reduced presidential election
turnout by 2%, a substantial effect given the narrow margins that
often decide presidential elections.

We build on this evidence by examining the relationship between union
strength and laws that restrict voting. FIGURE H shows that there is a
strong correlation between union density and voter suppression
legislation. A large majority of low- and medium-union-density states
passed at least one voter restriction bill between 2023 and 2025,
while a large majority of high-union-density states passed none. Among
high-union-density states, 14 out of 17 did not pass any voter
restrictions during this period, while only eight of the
medium-union-density states and three of the low-union-density states
can claim this distinction.

These results are consistent with evidence that unions actively defend
voting rights. Unions have long mobilized members to oppose voter
suppression laws, educated communities about their rights, and turned
out to vote despite increasing barriers (Bondy 2025). Unions have also
expanded access to voting: Dean, McCallum, and Grumbach (2023) found
that county-level union density was associated with greater access to
ballot drop boxes—a highly secure way to increase access to
voting—during the 2022 midterm elections. Together, these findings
suggest that stronger unions not only increase voter participation but
also help preserve and expand access to the ballot.

Figure H

 

STATE POLICY AND UNION DENSITY

Increasing union density across all states—including those where
anti-union policies have historically suppressed unionization—is
essential to strengthening both the economy and democracy, improving
all workers’ wages, and expanding access to public goods like health
care, retirement, and education.

As the previous section made clear, residents of high- and
low-union-density states face starkly different economic and social
realities. These wide variations in union density across states—and
highly variable economic outcomes—are strongly correlated with
variations in state labor policies. For example, the union rights of
millions of public-sector, agricultural, and domestic workers
(including home health care and in-home child care providers) vary by
state because workers in these occupations are excluded from coverage
under federal law. And even for private-sector workers whose union
rights _are_ covered under federal law, collective bargaining rights
are limited by anti-union “right-to-work” laws in many states.
Research shows that anti-union state policies result in lower union
density. Union density averages 6.2% in states with anti-union RTW
laws compared with 15.8% in non-RTW states, and states that limit or
prohibit public-sector collective bargaining have lower overall union
density than other states (Sherer and Gould 2024; Sherer and Morrissey
2026).

Here, we consider what union density would be if states with certain
anti-union laws adopted the policies of states that better protect
workers’ rights to unionize and collectively bargain. We consider
two policy changes: 1) requiring state and local governments to
bargain with public-sector workers who choose to unionize; and 2)
repealing so-called “right-to-work” laws that limit collective
bargaining rights of private-sector workers. These are two of many
policies that states can adopt to remove barriers to unionization, but
we focus on them because of their clearly documented, large-scale
impact on large numbers of workers across much of the country. At
present, roughly half of U.S. states have RTW laws in effect and do
not require public employers to bargain with unionized public
employees. Modeling changes to these two policies lets us estimate
what would happen to union density if we removed large state-by-state
labor policy disparities and created a stable “floor” for
collective bargaining for workers across all states. This provides an
important starting point for considering how additional, stronger
state labor policies might affect union density, worker wages, and
democracy.

PUBLIC-SECTOR WORKERS FACE WIDE DISPARITIES IN BARGAINING RIGHTS
ACROSS STATES

Variations in collective bargaining rights for public-sector workers
are rooted in history, notably in Southern states where systemic
racism drove the enactment of anti-union policies (Childers 2023;
Dixon 2007; Kaufman 2018; Stelzner, Hoyt, and Ramchurn 2019). By the
1980s, most states had enacted public-sector collective bargaining
policies, though these statutes varied in strength and coverage
(Freeman and Ichniowski 1988). In more recent decades, many states
have repealed or harshly limited formerly robust public-sector
collective bargaining statutes, while a few states have expanded them.
A key distinction is whether state and local government employers have
a legal duty to bargain with unionized employees over pay and working
conditions, rather than being merely permitted to bargain—or
outright banned from doing so.

Sherer and Morrissey (2026) classify state public-sector bargaining
rules across five categories of workers: teachers, police officers,
firefighters, other local government employees, and other state
government employees. States vary widely in which categories they
cover and how strongly, and that variation maps closely onto union
density. In states with strong, uniform duty-to-bargain rules across
all five categories, public-sector union density can be close to 50%
or higher, while in states that ban bargaining across most categories,
state and local density can fall as low as the single digits. Pay
consequences track these differences. Across the country,
public-sector employees earn less than their private-sector
counterparts with similar experience and education. This public-sector
pay gap is smaller when bargaining rights are strong: Sherer and
Morrissey (2026) estimate that in states with robust duty-to-bargain
rights, public-sector workers earn 14.3% less than private-sector
workers; the gap widens to 19.6% in states where bargaining is only
permitted, and to 22.5% in states where it is banned.

“RIGHT-TO-WORK” LAWS WEAKEN UNION DENSITY AND SUPPRESS WAGES FOR
ALL WORKERS

“Right-to-work” laws prohibit unions and employers from
negotiating over union security—the contract terms under which
workers covered by a union contract either join the union or pay an
agency fee covering their share of representation costs. State RTW
laws first emerged as part of anti-union industry campaigns to
suppress multiracial worker organizing and maintain Jim Crow labor
relations in Southern states following the passage of the National
Labor Relations Act (Pierce 2017). By making union finances more
unpredictable and leaving unions more vulnerable to ongoing employer
interference, these laws weaken unions’ stability, suppress union
density, and limit workers’ bargaining power. As a result, RTW laws
generate negative outcomes for all workers—with or without a union.
States with RTW laws have lower unionization rates and higher income
inequality, and workers in RTW states on average have lower wages and
benefits (Fortin, Lemieux, and Lloyd 2022). Sherer and Gould (2024)
document that workers in RTW states earn 3.2% less than otherwise
comparable workers in non-RTW states—about $1,670 per year for a
full-time worker.

There are currently 27 states with RTW laws in place—including
Colorado, which is not a traditional RTW state, but whose law has,
since 1943, effectively imposed RTW conditions. By barring unionized
workers from negotiating over union security unless they first win a
second, state-administered election by a 75% supermajority of those
voting or 50% plus one of all eligible workers—whichever is
higher—Colorado’s anti-union policy has produced RTW-like
outcomes, so we group it with RTW states.

REMOVING STATE ANTI-UNION POLICIES WOULD RAISE NATIONAL UNION DENSITY
FROM 9.9% TO 14.4%

We estimate that these two policy changes—1) requiring state and
local governments to bargain with public-sector workers who choose to
unionize, and 2) repealing RTW—would substantially increase
unionization in states that currently have more anti-union policies in
place, as shown in TABLE 1.17
[[link removed]]
In the 24 states without a duty to bargain with public-sector
employees, establishing that duty would raise public-sector union
density from 16.7% to 46.7%. In the 27 RTW states, repealing RTW would
increase private-sector density from 3.4% to 8.8%. Overall, removing
these anti-union policies would increase union density in 27 states
from 5.4% to 14.3%. Nationally, union density would rise from 9.9% to
14.4%.18
[[link removed]]
This is a conservative national estimate reflecting changes in union
density only for the 27 states undergoing hypothetical policy changes
and not including likely impacts on the 23 states and D.C. where
stronger union policies are already in place. These states would
likely also see some level of increased union density under this
scenario, given that removal of anti-union state policies across the
country would strengthen worker bargaining power and union organizing
resources in all states.

Table 1

 

REMOVING STATE-LEVEL ANTI-UNION POLICIES WOULD INCREASE MEDIAN WAGES
BY UP TO $4,900 A YEAR

Were the 27 RTW states to increase unionization to estimated levels,
overall annualized median wages would rise by $1,600 to $4,900 for
full-time, full-year workers, depending on the state. TABLE 1 shows
that if Virginia’s density rose from 4.9% to 15.5% because of the
removal of state-level anti-union policies, annual pay for full-time,
full-year workers at the state median wage would increase by about
$4,500. Removing these anti-union policies in Texas could cause a
similar increase in density, raising annual pay by $3,400.

Of course, were workers in all states able to achieve 30% union
density, the effects on median pay would be even larger. These impacts
are shown in FIGURE I. The 23 percentage point increase in density in
Alabama, for example, would increase annualized median pay there for
full-time, full-year workers by about $8,500.

 

RECENT STATE POLICY CHANGES SHOW THAT ANTI-UNION LAWS LOWER UNION
DENSITY

Recent “natural experiments” in states that have changed one or
both of these labor policies also show the impact on union density.
For example, in states that adopted new RTW laws since 2010, union
density fell 3.8 percentage points between 2010 and 2023. By
comparison, union density declined only 2 percentage points during
this same period in non-RTW states (Sherer and Gould 2024).

Wisconsin is an example of a state that both repealed a previous duty
to bargain with public employees (in 2011) and enacted a new RTW law
(in 2015). Since adopting these anti-union policies, between 2011 and
2024, Wisconsin’s union density has fallen by half, from 14% to 7%.
Over this same period, national union density declined just 2
percentage points, from 13% to 11%. With both a RTW law in place and
no public-sector duty to bargain, Wisconsin’s union density is
plummeting in comparison with national and regional trends (Dresser,
Rogers, and Vasquez 2025). Other studies show that Wisconsin’s
adoption of anti-labor policies and declining union density have
generated a wide array of harmful outcomes for the state’s economy
and democracy, including sharp decreases in public education spending,
declining worker wages, widening public-sector pay gaps (including
stark increases in gender pay gaps for teachers), and declining voter
participation (Nack et al. 2019; García and Han 2021; Biasi and
Sarsons 2022; Feigenbaum, Hertel-Fernandez, and Williamson 2018).

STATES HAVE OTHER POLICY OPTIONS TO ENABLE WORKERS TO INCREASE UNION
DENSITY

Beyond these two policy changes, states have numerous other
opportunities to increase union density by removing obstacles to
unionization and ensuring more workers have full rights to
collectively bargain (Sherer 2026). A few examples that have not yet
been adopted in most states include:

* Creating pathways to collective bargaining for all workers in
occupations not currently covered by federal labor law, including
in-home child care and home health care workers, agricultural workers,
and rideshare or delivery drivers treated as “independent
contractors” by digital platform companies;
* Protecting workers’ freedom to refuse mandatory “captive
audience” meetings on political or religious topics not related to
work duties, including mandatory anti-union meetings employers
typically hold when attempting to block workers from unionizing;
* Ensuring workers whose paychecks stop due to a strike or lockout
are eligible to apply for unemployment insurance; and
* Establishing or expanding state agency capacities and public labor
education programs that ensure workers can easily learn about their
union rights.

We do not model the specific impacts of all possible state policy
changes in this report. But our conservative, baseline estimate of
increases in union density likely to result from removing two of the
largest state obstacles to workers’ union rights—RTW laws in 27
states and the lack of a duty to bargain for public employees in 24
states—suggests that combining these changes with additional policy
changes would likely lead to additional increases in union density
across the country.

FEDERAL POLICY AND UNION DENSITY

Given the clear benefits of tripling union membership, it is critical
that policymakers prioritize reforms that enable workers to organize
and collectively bargain. It is tempting to search for a policy
“silver bullet” to restore the promise of the National Labor
Relations Act (NLRA), our primary labor law. But the reality is that
policymakers must adopt comprehensive labor law reforms to eradicate
the effects of decades of political neglect that has steadily
undermined the effectiveness of U.S. labor law. As discussed above,
these reforms must at a minimum reverse state anti-union policies, via
state or ideally federal labor law reforms that end Jim Crow-era
occupational exclusions, ensure equal union rights and pathways to
collective bargaining for all workers in all states, and eliminate RTW
laws.

LABOR LAW REFORM HAS PASSED THE HOUSE THREE TIMES WITH BIPARTISAN
SUPPORT

A consistent narrative maintains that such policy change is
impossible, but that narrative relies on the mistaken notions that
real reforms require more political power than the labor movement has
and that our legislative process prevents labor law reform. It is true
that winning policy fights takes significant political capital. But
labor law reform must not be seen as solely a labor movement priority.
It is central to any attempt to address affordability pressures and
economic inequality. And in this moment, such reform is imperative to
our democracy. While the Senate filibuster rules do prevent much
legislative progress, they are not inevitable dictates but rather
agreed-upon rules that, as history shows, can change. It is deeply
destructive to our political system to convince working people that
the system simply cannot be expected to serve their interests, which
is what this flawed narrative around labor law reform reinforces. To
be clear, policies favored by elites benefiting from the unequal
status quo are far more likely to become law than even broadly popular
ones. But these reforms have the potential to help rebalance this
inequality.

In fact, in the last two decades, legislation to significantly reform
labor law has passed the U.S. House of Representatives three
times—with bipartisan support each time. Even in the current
Congress, legislation aimed at restoring collective bargaining rights
has managed to bypass Republican House leadership opposition via
parliamentary procedure (discharge petition) and pass with bipartisan
support.19
[[link removed]]
Of the on average 12,000 bills introduced in a given Congress, labor
law reform measures have had more success than roughly 95% of
bills—passing a chamber with bipartisan support. Of course, Senate
rules around the filibuster requiring 60 votes to proceed on
consideration of various measures have been a significant impediment
to the Senate passing these reforms. However, since 2013, the Senate
has used the “constitutional option” to change its own rules for
procedures and has eliminated the 60-vote requirement to proceed on
specific debates three times. That could be done here, too.

RECORD HIGH UNION APPROVAL STRENGTHENS THE CASE FOR LABOR LAW REFORM

Labor unions today have significantly higher public approval ratings
than when major labor law reform was last considered, polling more
than 20 points higher.20
[[link removed]]
Since 2021, approval for unions has remained high, with over 68% of
people in the U.S. viewing unions favorably (Brenan 2025). This
positive view of unions is shared across generations, with majorities
of Boomers (59%), Gen X (58%), Millennials (61%), and Gen Z (63%)
viewing unions favorably. Young adults (ages 18–35) have the highest
favorability rate at 72% (Glass 2025).

Unions are viewed positively across party lines, with both Democrats
(90%) and independents (69%) having high favorability rates for
unions, and over 40% of Republicans approving of labor unions (Brenan
2025). Some conservative organizations recognize that unions are
popular among workers: Research by American Compass (2025) finds that
at least 46% of Republicans view unions somewhat favorably, with
favorability increasing among young Republicans (60%).

Data from the American National Election Studies show that people in
the U.S. favor unions over big business now more than ever—with the
average rating for labor unions hitting a new high (60%), while big
business hit a low (44%) (Sojourner and Reich 2025). Further, most
people in the U.S. say the decline in union density is bad for the
country (60%) and bad for working people (62%). Most young adults
(69%), including young Republicans (52%) and young Democrats (82%),
view the decline in union density as negative for working people (Van
Green 2025).

THREE BIPARTISAN BILLS WOULD PAVE THE WAY TOWARD RESTORING COLLECTIVE
BARGAINING RIGHTS

As with many popular policies, high public opinion of unions has not
translated into the enactment of labor law reform. Even though several
bills that would reform aspects of our current labor law are being
introduced and even passing with bipartisan support in the U.S. House
of Representatives, the Senate has failed to act on the legislation.
There are three main bills with bipartisan support that would help
reform our current labor law system and each should be passed.21
[[link removed]]

* THE PROTECTING THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE (PRO)
[[link removed]] ACT WOULD
RESTORE PRIVATE-SECTOR WORKERS’ RIGHT TO ORGANIZE AND BARGAIN
COLLECTIVELY. It would streamline the process of forming a union,
create a roadmap to reaching a first collective bargaining agreement,
establish civil monetary penalties for employers who violate labor
law, among other reforms—such as expanding coverage to more workers,
overriding state “right-to-work” laws, and banning “captive
audience” meetings (McNicholas, Poydock, and Rhinehart 2021). Since
its first introduction in 2019, the PRO Act has passed the House of
Representatives twice with bipartisan support.
* THE PUBLIC SERVICE FREEDOM TO NEGOTIATE ACT
[[link removed]] (PSFNA)
WOULD ESTABLISH PUBLIC-SECTOR WORKERS’ RIGHT TO ORGANIZE AND BARGAIN
COLLECTIVELY. This would fill an important gap—there is currently no
federal law that guarantees all public-sector workers at the federal,
state, and local levels the right to organize and collectively
bargain. As a result, more than half of U.S. states today lack
comprehensive collective bargaining laws for state and local
public-sector workers (Sherer 2026).
* THE PROTECTING AMERICA’S WORKFORCE ACT
[[link removed]] (PAWA)
WOULD REVERSE PRESIDENT TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDER THAT REVOKES
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS FOR FEDERAL WORKERS. The bill would
reestablish collective bargaining rights for more than 1 million
federal workers. In December 2025, PAWA passed the House of
Representatives by a 231-195 vote.

Beyond passing these important bills, policymakers should also
consider additional policies to help workers access collective
bargaining and union membership. We propose two concrete policies that
complement the labor reforms above. While these two proposals alone
will not result in tripling union membership, they could help more
workers receive the benefits of collective bargaining, which serves as
a corrective to the affordability crunch and the economic inequality
that characterizes our economy.

GUARANTEED ANNUAL RAISES FOR WORKERS IN FIRST CONTRACT ARBITRATION

When workers win a union and begin to collectively bargain with their
employer, both parties have an obligation to bargain in “good
faith.” However, given that the NLRA lacks meaningful penalties for
violations, employers often engage in bad faith bargaining tactics
with few consequences. In fact, it is well documented that many
union-busting consultants view bargaining as a new phase of
union-busting and advise employers to drag out bargaining for as long
as possible. The goal is to avoid reaching a contract for a year or
more, hoping that workers will then give up their union through
decertification, which is permitted one year after the election. It is
no coincidence that workers who have successfully formed a new union
spend an average of 465 days bargaining for a first contract before
reaching an agreement.

The Faster Labor Contracts Act, which overwhelmingly passed the U.S.
House of Representatives last month, would discourage delay and
promote good faith bargaining by establishing a mediation and binding
arbitration process when employers refuse to bargain in good faith.
Beyond guaranteeing workers first contract arbitration, we suggest the
adoption of a mandatory cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for workers
whose first contract bargaining ends up in arbitration. This would
establish an important guardrail for workers in the arbitration
process, given that an arbitrator will ultimately impose a final
contract on both parties. This provision would ensure that workers
receive at least a COLA each year of their first contract. In other
words, by voting for a union, workers would be voting for a guaranteed
raise.22
[[link removed]]

For the average production, nonsupervisory worker, a 3% COLA would
result in almost a $2,000 increase in annual earnings for a full-time,
full-year worker. 23
[[link removed]]
TABLE 2 shows that, while these increases would vary widely by
industry because pay varies widely by industry, workers in some of the
lowest-paid industries would still see annual pay increases above
$1,000.

Table 2

DEFAULT COLLECTIVE BARGAINING WHEN CEO-TO-WORKER PAY RATIOS EXCEED
100:1

The outsized and ballooning gap in recent decades between CEO pay and
the pay of typical workers is among the clearest signs that the
economy’s rules have been rigged to allow the most powerful to claim
oversized shares of income growth. This CEO-to-worker pay ratio rose
nearly tenfold from 1978 to 2024, as the pay of CEOs rose over 1,000%
while the pay of typical workers rose just 26%. The explosion of CEO
pay was driven not by CEO’s rising productivity or skills, but by
policy changes that boosted both the incentives and the ability of
CEOs to raise their own pay.

When a firm’s CEO makes more than 100 times what the typical worker
in their industry makes, effective corporate governance has clearly
broken down—which threatens the ability of those outside the C-suite
to receive their fair share of the firm’s income. The two main
parties competing with executives to claim a share of a firm’s
income are the shareholders and the firm’s workers. The best
mechanism for ensuring that workers are able to bargain against CEOs
and shareholders for their fair share of the income generated by the
firm is collective bargaining.

We propose instituting default collective bargaining in any firm that
meets or exceeds this 100:1 ratio. Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC) reporting already requires the annual disclosure of CEO pay (SEC
2007). We propose that these disclosures be reported not only to the
SEC but also to the National Labor Relations Board. Comparing those
disclosures with Bureau of Labor Statistics data on the pay of a
typical worker economy-wide in various industries, the NLRB would
determine which corporations meet the default collective bargaining
ratio of 100:1.24
[[link removed]]
The NLRB would then publish a public notice and notify specific
corporations and their workers that the default collective bargaining
ratio had been met, triggering default collective bargaining at the
firm. The NLRB would then direct an election for a bargaining
representative to be held within 45 days of the notification.25
[[link removed]]

Nonsupervisory workers at these firms would then have the opportunity
to select a bargaining representative of their choosing—whether a
labor organization or other representative. The NLRB would conduct the
election for and certify a bargaining representative, after which
bargaining would start. For purposes of default collective bargaining,
the presumption for the bargaining unit would be a wall-to-wall
unit—a model where all nonsupervisory employees join a single
bargaining unit—ensuring comprehensive coverage under the collective
bargaining process and resulting contract. This standard would apply
absent an employer or employee representative demonstrating
extraordinary circumstances.26
[[link removed]]
The NLRB would then determine the appropriate bargaining unit, the
same way the agency already accepts or rejects bargaining unit
proposals. We propose that all such questions be resolved within 10
days of the NLRB’s notice of election for bargaining representative.
This proposal would not apply to existing bargaining units, but in
firms where unions are present, it would apply to any nonunionized
nonsupervisory employees, as described below.

A threshold of 100:1 for the CEO-to-typical-worker pay ratio is
reasonable and fair. A ratio this high clearly signals a fatal
breakdown in the ability of the firm’s workers and shareholders to
protect their income claims against executives looking to maximize
their own incomes. A ratio this high will not affect _most_ publicly
traded companies but _will_ be relevant to a large share of the U.S.
workforce.

Comprehensive data on CEO pay are available only for a subset of
firms: The Compustat Execucomp database tracks CEO pay for half of
publicly owned companies (and most U.S. firms are not publicly owned).
For the firms in the Compustat database, under half (41.7%) had a
CEO-to-typical-worker pay ratio exceeding 100:1 in 2024. This proposal
would provide the 30 million workers employed in firms that have
higher ratios—representing about a fifth of total private-sector
employment in the United States—with collective bargaining.

It is not a coincidence that the stratospheric rise in CEO pay was
accompanied by an acceleration in the downward trend of unionization
in the United States. The broader correlation between declining
unionization and the rise of inequality is well established, and
the highest-quality research documents that this relationship is
clearly _causal_, with the decline of unions leading to a higher
share of income claimed by households at the top of the income
distribution (Farber et al. 2021).

To be clear, using a threshold CEO-to-worker pay ratio as a trigger
for default collective bargaining will not alone solve the problem of
excess CEO pay. We focus on this threshold as a policy trigger because
it is a readily available and _measurable_ indicator of the outsized
control of executives over the distribution of the firm’s income. In
the total absence of collective bargaining or any other strong
corporate governance institutions, firm executives will shift income
in a zero-sum fashion away from both the workers and the shareholders
of a firm. If shareholders manage to assert some influence over CEO
pay—e.g., through public pressure campaigns or say-on-pay
mandates—one likely outcome will be CEOs looking to suppress the
firm’s wages even further to make room for both their own outsized
salaries and a return to shareholders that placates them. Only
collective bargaining can protect the interests and earnings _of
workers_ in firms where executives pocket an outsized share of
firms’ incomes.

If collective bargaining became widespread enough throughout the
corporate sector, it would likely not only boost workers’ wages but
also rein in excess executive pay broadly—actually helping
shareholders at the same time. The research on this question is
encouraging: Unions and collective bargaining have been found to
significantly restrain excess CEO pay (Huang et al. 2017;
Nanda, Nishikawa, and Prevost 2025; DiNardo, Hallock, and Pischke
2000). But even if expanded collective bargaining does not tamp down
the CEO-to-worker pay ratio beneath our 100:1 threshold, it will at a
minimum protect workers’ interests from excess executive
power—without foreclosing any policy route shareholders take to
restrain excess CEO pay.

Currently, a number of firms with at least some degree of unionization
among their workforces have CEO-to-worker pay ratios that exceed
100:1. But this is not an argument against using this threshold as an
indicator of dysfunctional corporate governance requiring a strong
policy solution. For many of these firms, union coverage among their
rank-and-file workforce is far from complete, so this proposal would
help fill in glaring gaps. Most of these firms clearly do pay wages
that are among the highest in their industries, which signals that the
policy of default collective bargaining to protect workers’
interests in the face of dysfunctional corporate governance would
largely work. Finally, one key empirical driver of high CEO pay is the
simple size of the firm: The CEO-to- worker pay ratio rises steeply
with the size of the firm, all else equal.27
[[link removed]]
The firms with CEO-to-worker pay ratios above 100:1 and some degree of
unionization among their workforces are large firms; it would take a
very strong effect of collective bargaining on CEO pay specifically to
have kept pay ratios at these large firms well below average.

In our world with only 10% union density (and less than this in the
private sector), it should hardly be a shock that collective
bargaining _by itself_ has not been able to stem what has been an
irresistible tide toward high CEO pay. Even large increases in
executive pay are not enormous when compared with overall returns to
shareholders. Given the strong policy and economic barriers to
shareholder activism in restraining CEO pay, it takes truly outrageous
pay scales to mobilize enough organized opposition from shareholders.
In those firms where it is relatively strong, collective bargaining
_has_ protected workers’ interests, and that is the primary goal we
are looking to achieve with this policy. The fact that in these firms
the CEOs have felt free to shift income to themselves at the expense
of other stakeholders (like the shareholders of the firm) is not a
sign that default collective bargaining is a bad solution for
protecting workers’ interests—it is only a sign that the problem
of excess CEO pay needs to be addressed from other angles as well.

TRIPLING UNION DENSITY IS WHAT WORKERS WANT—AND IT IS ENTIRELY
ACHIEVABLE

Restoring union density to 1950s levels is not a nostalgic pipe dream.
Federal and state policymakers have a clear roadmap for tripling union
density. While no single reform discussed in this report is a silver
bullet for the problems facing the country, taken together they would
address one of the worst: the erosion of workers’ right to bargain
for their fair share of the wealth they produce. These reforms are
meaningful steps toward tripling union density, and toward an economy
where productivity gains are shared broadly, not captured by corporate
elites and the superrich.

The evidence in this report shows what is at stake. Tripling union
density would deliver nearly $270,000 in extra earnings over the
median worker’s career and shift $1.2 trillion annually to working
people—reversing a third of the rise in inequality since 1979.
Rebuilding union power would narrow racial wage gaps by more than a
third, and removing state anti-union policies would help dismantle the
legacy of Jim Crow-era campaigns aiming to suppress multiracial
organizing. States with higher union density deliver better economic
and personal well-being outcomes to their residents, and they have
healthier democracies with fewer voting restrictions. At a time when
the voting rights of all citizens are under attack, rebuilding union
power is a democratic imperative.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Hilary Wething for her contribution to this
report’s section on public education spending. We also thank Matthew
Wich, Summer Labor Fellow from the Institute for Social Concerns at
the University of Notre Dame, for his support of the project.

APPENDIXMETHODOLOGYHOW WE MEASURE UNION DENSITY

The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides data on both
union membership—workers who are full-fledged union members—and
union representation, which includes both union members and workers
who are not members but are covered by a collective bargaining
agreement. As a result, the share of workers represented by a union is
higher than the share of union members. For example, in 2025, 11.2% of
workers were represented by a union, but 10% were union members.

In this report, we measure union density as the share of workers who
are members of a union. Throughout this report, the terms “union
density” and “unionization” refer to those who are members of a
union. When measuring union density by state, data are averaged over
three years (2023 to 2025) to give a more accurate estimate of state
unionization rates and avoid temporary single-year changes due to
small sample sizes in some states.

ESTIMATING WAGE EFFECTS OF TRIPLING UNION DENSITY

To assess how much higher wages would be after tripling union density,
we use state-level annual data on wages and unionization from 1979 to
2019 and compare median wages with unionization rates across states
and over time. Specifically, we regress the state median wage on the
state union membership rate, controlling for permanent differences in
state characteristics, national annual shocks (like recessions), and
annual state characteristics like state unemployment rate, minimum
wage level, and education, race, age, gender, broad industry, and
managerial shares.

Using state-level data from the Current Population Survey Outgoing
Rotation Group for 1979–2019, we regress the log median wage on
union density with state and year fixed effects and additional
covariates: the log minimum wage, unemployment rate, and shares of
those with less than a high school degree and just a high school
degree, age group shares, and shares of those who are white, Black,
Hispanic, married, and shares of those in the public sector,
manufacturing, construction, services, and a managerial occupation.
Regressions are weighted by state employment levels averaged over
1979–2019. The coefficient on union membership is 0.724 with a
standard error, accounting for clustering at the state level, of
0.191.

To calculate effects of increasing union density on racial wage gaps,
we use the same wage regression as before, except where the dependent
variable is the state annual racial wage gap.

The calculation yielding the $1.2 trillion estimate of the annual
increase in workers’ pay from tripling union density is as follows.
First, the share of total labor income claimed by the bottom 80% is
calculated from data provided by the Congressional Budget Office’s
(CBO 2026) Distribution of Household Income data (we focus on the
bottom 80% because research has generally identified the positive
effect of unions on boosting pay as applying mostly to union and
nonunion workers in the bottom 80% of the U.S. workforce). In 1979
this share was 60.5%, but by 2019 it had fallen to 50.1%. We use 50%
for our calculations. Then we multiply the 14.5% boost to pay
stemming from a tripling of union density by this 50% of labor
income to get an estimate (7.25%) of how much total labor
compensation would rise in the event of a tripling of union density.
In the first quarter of 2026, the National Income and Product Accounts
(NIPA) Table 2.1 from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (2026a) reports
that total labor compensation was $16.1 trillion. Multiplying this by
the 7.25% pay boost from tripling union density yields $1.16
trillion in higher pay for the bottom 80%. We believe this is the
appropriate estimate for approximating how much higher wages would be
for most workers if union density tripled. While potential caveats
merit consideration, none, in our view, hold much force. For example,
the regressions used earlier in the paper use median wages, not
median total labor compensation, as the dependent variable.
However, a long research literature has highlighted that benefit
premiums stemming from unionization are likely even larger than wage
premiums (Knepper 2020). To the degree that tripling union density
works by giving all workers more leverage and bargaining power in
labor markets, it seems clear that some of this leverage will be used
to obtain broader and more generous coverage of benefits, not just
higher wages. Another objection could be that union effects (both
direct and indirect effects) are higher in the middle of the wage
distribution than in either the lower or upper parts of the
distribution, and hence the full 14.5% wage boost would only apply
to (say) the second and middle fifths of workers while workers in
the lowest and fourth fifth would see smaller wage boosts.
However, in work that has estimated both the overall average effect
of unionization on nonunion wages and the effect by wage percentile,
the overall average effect is roughly one-half the effect at the
median, a result that would be consistent with applying the 14.5%
premium to half of all labor income, as we do (Fortin, Lemieux, and
Lloyd 2021). Other research has similarly found that union effects at
the median are very close to overall average effects (Baker et al.
2026).

For our analysis of how wage effects differ across union density
levels, we use the same regression of log median wages on union
density described above, modified to let the slope differ below and
above 15% density using a piecewise-linear specification interacting
union density with an indicator for density of at least 15%, while
retaining the same controls and state and year fixed effects, weighted
by state employment. The difference in slopes is statistically
significant at the 1% level.

The scatterplot in FIGURE B uses 50 state-year bins to show this
nonlinearity directly. The binned scatterplot groups the state-year
observations into 50 employment-weighted bins by union density and
plots each bin’s average real log median wage against its average
union density, after partialing out the same controls and state and
year fixed effects used in the regression.

STATE UNION DENSITY GROUPINGS

We divided the 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia into three
equally sized groups based on their current (2023–2025) level of
union density.

These groupings are shown in APPENDIX TABLE 1. We refer to the 17
states with the highest union density as “high-union-density
states” (with 11.9%–25.1% union membership rates); the next 17
states (including D.C.) are “medium-union-density states”
(6.8%–11.6%); and the remaining 17 are “low-union-density
states” (2.5%–6.1%).

Appendix Table 1

 

ESTIMATING UNION DENSITY EFFECTS OF ESTABLISHING A PUBLIC-SECTOR DUTY
TO BARGAIN AND REPEALING “RIGHT-TO-WORK” LAWS
To estimate the effect of these two policy changes—1) requiring
state and local governments to bargain with public-sector workers who
choose to unionize, and 2) repealing RTW—we use the CPS Outgoing
Rotation Groups for 2023–2025 to compute union density rates in
states with stronger union policies (i.e., states with public sector
collective bargaining and/or without RTW). We do this separately by
industry and major occupation group for the private sector and by
level of government (federal, state, and local) for the public sector.
We then apply those rates to the workforce of each state that lacks
the corresponding policy, holding each state’s industry, occupation,
and government-employment mix fixed. Nevada is an exception on the
private-sector side: Although Nevada is a RTW state, its
private-sector union density is already comparatively high, so we hold
its private-sector density at its current level.

NOTES

1.
[[link removed]]“Union
membership” refers to workers who are full-fledged union members,
while “union representation” includes both union members and
workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement but not members.
The share of workers represented by a union is thus higher than the
share of union members. In 2025, for example, 11.2% were represented
by a union and 10% were union members.

2.
[[link removed]]In
2025, for the fifth consecutive year in a row, approval of unions
reached record high levels last seen in the late 1950s, when union
membership was roughly triple what it is now.

3.
[[link removed]]The
productivity-pay gap is a measure of how much income is generated in
an average hour of work.

4.
[[link removed]]“Union
wage premium” refers to the additional wages paid to union members
compared with nonunion workers with similar characteristics.

5.
[[link removed]]For
example, when the top marginal tax rate was 91%, as it was in the
1950s and early 1960s, executives kept far less of each additional
dollar of pay than they do under today’s 37% top rate, which reduced
the payoff to pursuing ever-larger compensation packages.

6.
[[link removed]]Relatedly,
expanded unemployment benefits during the pandemic boosted workers’
bargaining power and compelled employers to make higher wage offers
(Bivens and Banerjee 2023).

7.
[[link removed]]See
appendix for details about our methodology.

8.
[[link removed]]The
real median wage is the wage of the person in the middle of the
overall wage distribution, including both union and nonunion workers.

9.
[[link removed]]The
median monthly cost of a mortgage in the U.S. is $1,521 according to
Census (2025). Over the course of a year, that is $18,252.

10.
[[link removed]]See
appendix for details about the calculation of this figure.

11.
[[link removed]]In
2020 and 2021, Congress authorized Economic Impact Payments—better
known as the “COVID checks.” Those three rounds of payments added
roughly $430 billion to U.S. families’ personal income in those
years and were widely viewed as an historically ambitious economic
intervention. Data on how much these checks added to personal income
can be found at Bureau of Economic Analysis (2026c).

12.
[[link removed]]Data
on federal defense spending in 2025 is from Bureau of Economic
Analysis (2026b).

13.
[[link removed]]Data
on the income shares by percentile come from CBO (2026), which
contains data through 2022. The calculation of how much the $1.2
trillion gain to wages would reverse the rise in income shares of the
top quintile uses data from BEA (2026a).

14.
[[link removed]]See
appendix for details on how we estimated these wage effects.

15.
[[link removed]]See
appendix for details on how we calculated the effects of increasing
union density on racial wage gaps.

16.
[[link removed]]See
Appendix Table 1, which shows how we grouped states into low-,
medium-, and high-union-density categories.

17.
[[link removed]]For
details on the data and methodology used to produce these estimates,
see appendix.

18.
[[link removed]]For
this state-level analysis, we use 2023–2025 averages of union
density across states, which is 9.9%, rather than the 10% for 2025
cited earlier in this report.

19.
[[link removed]]See
passage of Protecting America’s Workforce Act
[[link removed]] and Faster
Labor Contracts Act
[[link removed]].

20.
[[link removed]]The
last time a major labor law reform was considered was in 2009 with the
Employee Free Choice Act.

21.
[[link removed]]The
Protecting the Right to Organize Act
[[link removed]] has
two Republican co-sponsors, the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate
Act
[[link removed]] has six
Republican co-sponsors, and the Protecting America’s Workforce Act
[[link removed]] has
nine Republican co-sponsors.

22.
[[link removed]]One
way to determine the exact COLA amount is to use nonseasonally
adjusted values of the national Consumer Price Index for All Urban
Consumers (CPI-U) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These
price index values are easily available, less subject to revision, and
widely covered in the media. The simplest COLA adjustment would be to
use the annual rate of inflation measured as the percent change
between the two most recent annual averages of nonseasonally adjusted
CPI-U values. See BLS (2023) for other considerations.

23.
[[link removed]]CBO
estimated CPI in 2026 at 2.8%, 2027 at 2.4%, and then 2.3%
after—however those estimates were done before the U.S. war in Iran
that increased energy prices, so we estimate COLA at 3% for purposes
of the proposal. To calculate full-time, full-year worker wages, we
used 2025 average production, nonsupervisory wage rates (EPI 2026f).

24.
[[link removed]]We
specifically would recommend calculating the CEO-to-typical-worker pay
ratio using the methodology detailed in EPI (2025). 

25.
[[link removed]]In
order to appear on the ballot, an individual or organization would
have to demonstrate a record of collective bargaining over the
preceding three years or obtain 100 signatures or 10% of the
workforce, whichever is less.

26.
[[link removed]]The
showing of extraordinary circumstances is referenced in the acute care
hospital rule: 29 CFR § 103.30 (1989).

27.
[[link removed]]This
correlation between simple firm size and CEO pay is yet another piece
of evidence that CEO pay is not about the skills or acumen of
individual CEOs, but is driven by noncompetitive market structures and
labor markets for executives.

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See related work on Education
[[link removed]] | Collective bargaining and
right to organize
[[link removed]]
| Health [[link removed]] | Public-sector
workers [[link removed]] |
Economic inequality
[[link removed]] | Unions and Labor
Standards [[link removed]] |
Wages, Incomes, and Wealth
[[link removed]] | Congress
[[link removed]] | CEO Pay
[[link removed]] | Voting access
[[link removed]]

See more work by HEIDI SHIERHOLZ
[[link removed]], CELINE MCNICHOLAS
[[link removed]], JOSH BIVENS
[[link removed]], JENNIFER SHERER
[[link removed]], BEN ZIPPERER
[[link removed]], and MARGARET POYDOCK
[[link removed]]

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