By McKenzie Romero | Editor
Participation in labor unions has risen across the country, new research finds, though by how much depends on what state you’re talking about.
In the nation’s 26 right-to-work states, including Utah, requiring union membership or dues as a condition of employment is prohibited by law. And also in those states, union rates remain lower, even as unions have grown nationwide.
In this Labor Day edition of the Dispatch we look at the latest on labor unions across the country. Our full newsletter returns tomorrow.
“What seems to be the number one driver is the state of the state. … If the policy is anti-union, it suppresses worker will. Where the law allows worker will to flourish, as I would argue it should, then you see higher numbers. So you can’t ignore politics. You can’t ignore policy.” — Robert Bruno, who leads the labor education program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on where union membership has grown.
Members of the UA Local 140 Plumbers, Pipefitters, HVAC&R union march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Salt Lake City on Saturday, March 15, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
By Kevin Hardy
Last year, the nation added more than 411,000 union members — the largest annual growth since 2008, according to a study published just ahead of the Labor Day holiday by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
At the end of last year, more than 14.6 million American workers belonged to a union — about 10% of the workforce, the study said. It shows that workers in collective bargaining states earn significantly more than those in other states. After adjusting for cost of living variances, the report calculated average hourly earnings of $34.16 in right-to-work states and $37.24 in collective bargaining states.
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