Posts tagged Bureau of Labor Statistics
Portable Benefits for America’s Independent Workforce
November 6, 2026 // America’s benefits system was largely built around traditional employment, leading to a reality where workers typically receive health care and other benefits from a single employer or seek expensive options independently. Portable benefits, however, are centered around workers instead of businesses. Portable benefits accounts allow benefits to move with workers throughout their careers. Contributions may come from multiple sources while the accounts remain worker-owned, and providers can offer new benefits opportunities to the independent worker community that are more affordable and accessible.
Simone Barron: Even a Downturn Won’t Stop New York’s Minimum-Wage Hike
October 29, 2026 // Governor Hochul promises a workaround for a provision in state law that mandates freezing the wage amid job losses.
Why more Pittsburgh-area librarians are becoming ‘steelworkers’
October 19, 2026 // A lack of administrative transparency, paired with over a year of grappling with short-staffing, wages as low as $13.22 per hour, changing leadership and expanding responsibilities, pushed workers to unionize, by a 13-3 vote, with the United Steelworkers (USW) in late July. The Cooper-Siegel staff enters the bargaining phase of their first contract amid rising tensions and concerns across the broader library workforce. They join more than 750 library workers across the country — including in Ohio, Illinois and New York — who have organized over the last 12 months as library wages lag way below other sectors and the soaring cost of living.
Big Labor’s bid for a red workplace
October 16, 2026 // The culmination of these policies to make the workplace red is sectoral bargaining, which structurally forces all workers in an industry under the control of union cadres in the name of class consciousness. It would be a decisive Trojan Horse, entering the American workplace blessed by certain figures on the right disillusioned by the consequences of contemporary American labor relations.
Editorial Board: Americans approve of unions. They just don’t want to join one.
September 9, 2026 // Gallup says 71 percent of Americans approve of labor unions, near a record high. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 10 percent of American workers are in labor unions, near a record low. What gives? The first issue is that Gallup wasn’t asking whether respondents wanted to join a union themselves. In 2022, Gallup found that unions had the same approval rating as they do this year, but it also asked nonunion workers how interested they were in joining.
Minimum Wage Myths are Flooding the Internet
July 27, 2026 // Salaries are a function of supply and demand, not government planning. Employers hire workers up to the point where the value of their labor justifies the wage, while workers decide whether to supply their labor based on the pay offered. As the Texas example shows, the true minimum wage is whatever the market decides, and in 2026 that’s almost never as low as $7.25. Minimum wages can also hurt the workers that they’re meant to help. California’s minimum wage is among the highest in the nation, and California now has the highest unemployment rate of all 50 states.
Don’t Panic: A Skeptic’s Guide to the AI Jobs Doomsday
July 16, 2026 // Overall, US unemployment was 5.9 percent in mid-1979 and 5.3 percent by mid-1989.[25] During this same period the working-age population swelled by 21.5 million, or about 13 percent.[26] So, while some manufacturing jobs were lost, overall unemployment actually declined slightly over that period despite an increase in job seekers. New jobs in new fields were created by automation. Somebody had to operate the machines, build and maintain them, and transport them to foreign countries. This is the nature of automation: It focuses on eliminating the more tedious tasks, freeing up time, labor, and resources for other pursuits.
Op-ed: 8 years after Janus, unions are still trying to keep workers in the dark
July 6, 2026 // The National Education Association’s headquarters dues revenue fell from $370 million in fiscal 2017 to an inflation-adjusted $310 million five years later — a decline in real terms of about 16 percent. Nationally, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show public-sector union density slid from 33.9 percent in 2018 to 32.2 percent in 2024, before edging back up to 32.9 percent last year. States that gave workers more direct control over their own dues saw the effect even more clearly. After Florida ended government payroll deduction of union dues in 2023, the Florida Education Association lost more than 20,000 members in a single school year. When workers must actively choose to pay, rather than having dues quietly deducted by default, a meaningful share of them chooses not to.
Workers Voted on Decertifying Unions 1,600 Times in the Past Decade. Teamsters Are the Most Common Target.
May 5, 2026 // Dozens of union decertification elections are held in workplaces across America every year, according to data collected by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The Teamsters are often the target. Of the 1,620 decertification elections that the NLRB tracked between 2016 and 2025, more than 23 percent sought to end Teamsters representation. The 373 decertification petitions targeting the Teamsters during that period were more than twice the number filed against the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which had the second most.
Union membership rate 10.0 percent in 2025
April 26, 2026 // The union membership rate of public-sector (government) workers, 32.9 percent in 2025, continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers. The public-sector union membership rate increased by 0.7 percentage point over the year. The union membership rate continued to be highest in local government, which employs many workers in heavily unionized occupations. The union membership rate in the private sector (5.9 percent across all industries) was unchanged over the year. Industries with some of the highest unionization rates in 2025 included transportation and utilities, 14.3 percent, and construction, 11.1 percent. Among the lowest unionization rates were financial activities, 1.5 percent, professional and business services, 2.1 percent, and leisure and hospitality (which includes food services and drinking places), 3.0 percent.