Tripling US Union Membership Would Shift $1.2 Trillion To Workers Annually
Tripling union membership in the US would lead to a 14.5% raise for the median US worker, shifting $1.2 trillion to workers annually and significantly narrowing racial wage gaps, according to a new report released on Wednesday.
The report from the Economic Policy Institute notes that union membership rates across the workforce, also known as union density, was once three times as high as it is today. Union density in the 1950s was more than 30% before it started to decline in the 1960s. By the 1980s, union density dropped to 22.2% only to decline even further in recent decades, to 10% in 2025.
“I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with workers, no matter where you go – big city, small town – who basically are saying over and over again: ‘My rent keeps going up, my paycheck does not stretch as far as it used to, I walk into the grocery store and I ask myself, when did shit get so expensive?’ It is just a constant.” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, during a press conference on Wednesday.
Despite the lower union density, public approval of labor unions has remained high in recent years, with more than 68% of Americans viewing unions favorably in 2025. More than 50 million US workers would join a union if they could.