Tripling union membership in the US would lead to a 14.5% raise for the median US worker, shifting $1.2tn 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.
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.
The report notes that the decline in union density comes amid aggressive union busting by corporations and new anti-union laws. Declines in union density have also correlated to surges in wealth and income inequality. Since 1979, worker productivity has increased in the US at a pace 2.7 times faster than the pace of pay increases for workers.
“By making it harder and harder for workers to organize and bargain collectively, the rich seized more and more income and wealth, destroying the US middle class,” Robert Reich, former US secretary of labor, writes in the foreword of the report. “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.”
Line chart showing the gap between compensation and production increasing
If union density in the US tripled to 30%, the median worker would see a 14.5% raise amounting to $7,700 annually – over $1.2tn annually to workers – or nearly $270,000 over a 35-year career. It would also narrow the racial wage gap and increase health insurance coverage. These changes would reverse one-third of the rise in inequality since 1979, according to the report.
Wage premiums that come with union membership are historically between 15% to 20%, according to the report, and may be underestimated due to low union density. Collective bargaining agreements also increase wages across the board for non-union workers.
“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.
The report also offered a roadmap on how union membership can increase, including passing the Protecting the Right to Organize Act that would strengthen collective bargaining rights and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act that would guarantee collective bargaining rights for public sector workers. The report also cites proposals that would guarantee annual raises for newly unionized workers and require collective bargaining at companies where the CEO to worker pay ratio exceeds 100:1.
Revoking “right to work” laws and restrictions on public sector bargaining would alone increase union density in the US from 9.9% to 14.4%, according to the report.
Personal health and wellbeing are also cited in the report as benefits of increasing union density, as states with high union densities have more public education investments, Medicaid expansions and voting rights.
“I think this report shows that there’s no better way to fix what ails this country than to make it possible for more workers to join a union,” Shuler said. “Unions truly do have the power to transform this country. They change lives. They change the course of families. They change entire communities.”
